A history of Italian literature (1265-1907)

LITERATURE OF ITALY

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literature!

Edited by Rossiter Johnson and
Dora Knowlton Ranous ^ <& <&

With a General Introduction by William
Michael Rossetti ^ and Special Intro-
ductions by James, Cardinal Gibbons,
Charles Eliot Norton, S. G. W. Ben-
jamin, William S. Walsh, Maurice
rancis Egan, and others ^ <& <& <& <&
New translations, and former render-
ings compared and revised «& <& <& <&
Translators : James C. Brogan, Lord Charle-
mont, Geoffrey Chaucer, Hartley Coleridge,
Florence Kendrick Cooper, Ladf Dacre,.
Theodore Dwight, Edward Fairfax, Ugo
Foscolo, G. A. Greene, Sir Thomas Hoby,
William Dean Howells, Loigi Monti, Evan-
gcline M. O'Connor, Thomas Okey, Dora
Cnowlton Ranous, Thomas Roscoe, William
Stewart Rose, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Wil-
iam Michael Rossetti, John Addington
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BINDING

HE binding on this volume is a facsimile of the
original on exhibition among the Treasures of
the Vatican, and is here reproduced, by special
permission, for the first time.
It is an Italian binding of the second half of the six-
teenth century. The design makes a very beautiful
panel, upon which are stamped the arms of Cardinal
Michele Bonelli. The title of the original book is
stamped above the arms, while the name of the Cardinal
occurs below.

A HISiv,

ITAI

THE

From a Painting by E. Hamman

TRANSLATED BY EVANGELINE M. O'CONNOR

H AN INTRODUCTION BY

MICHAEL ROS TTI

A HISTORY

OF

ITALIAN LITERATURE

(1265-1907)

BY

FRANCESCO FLAMINI

TRANSLATED BY EVANGELINE M. O'CONNOR

WITH AN INDEX

THE NATIONAL ALUMNI

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
THE NATIONAL ALUMNI

65GS78

GENERAL PREFACE

T was a shrewd trick of the old buccaneers, when
they buried their plunder, to establish marks in
various directions, each pointing at the spot
where the treasure lay. A single mark would
indicate merely that it was somewhere on an indefinite
line; but where several of these lines crossed each other
the spot was shown with exactness. Anyone who
should have had the luck to discover some of these
marks, and trace the indicated lines, might have helped
himself to the gold. We cannot study Chaucer, or
Shakespeare, or many another author, without observ-
ing indications that they have borrowed plots and
characters from another literature; and when we trace
the indicated lines, we find that a large number of them
meet in Italy, and consequently we look there for the
original treasure. As the Italian peninsula is larger and
more varied than Greece, and in civilization antedated
France, Germany, and Spain, while its capital had been
for several centuries the center of the known world, it
was inevitable that the greatest literature of the later
Middle Ages and the Renaissance should spring from
its soil.

Mrs. Jameson remarks that the fact that every trav-
eler speaks of Italy as the second country in the world

Ui

iv GENERAL PREFACE

proves that it is really the first. However this may be,
the land and its art and its literature forever challenge
the attention of the tourist, the reader, and the connois-
seur. The dreamy shores of Lake Como, the stones of
sea-born Venice, the shades of Vallombrosa, the un-
numbered treasures of Florence, Milan's "mount of
marble and hundred spires," the ruins of historic Rome,
the revelations of Pompeii, and the weird mystery of
Paestum, all are familiar to thousands of travelers who
know hardly a word of the beautiful lingua italiana and
have little conception of the extent and richness of its
literature. Shakespeare placed his Othello and Shylock
in Venice, his Katherine and Petruchio in Padua, his
Two Gentlemen and his Romeo and Juliet in Verona,
his Julius Caesar and Coriolanus in Rome, and parts of
plays in various other places in Italy. In more modern
times our attention has been called to the Italy of Sterne's
Sentimental Journey, the Italy that Byron and Shelley
loved, the Italy that Dickens tried to picture, the Italy
of Landor and the Brownings, the Italy with which
Ruskin and Howells and Crawford have made us ac-
quainted. We have all been introduced to the country,
but not many of us to its rich and romantic literature.
One reason for this may be found in a remark of
Byron's — that it is very easy to acquire a smattering of
the Italian language, but very difficult to master it.

Dante's Divine Comedy has had various translators and
commentators, from Gary to Longfellow; English ver-
sions of Boccaccio's tales are common; and the Orlando
Furioso has been translated, but hardly edited as it
should be. Beyond these, there is a vast deal of Italian

GENERAL PREFACE v

literature that has been left untouched or imperfectly
rendered into our language. Of Flamini's admirable
History of Italian Literature, our translation, which forms
the first volume of this series, is the only English ver-
sion ever made. Boccaccio's exquisite story of La
Fiammctta is attainable in English nowhere but in the
translation here presented. So also with Carcano's
Damiano; and Pellico's Francesco, da Rimini has not here-
tofore had any worthy rendering into our language.
Serao's The Conquest of Rome and D'Annunzio's The
Flame have here been newly translated because no satis-
factory work by an earlier translator existed. And of
the other books that are included in the series, nearly
all have required careful editing, either for moral deli-
cacy, or for correctness of English, or for fidelity to
the original. Much labor and skill have been expended
upon this part of our task, with results that we hope
will commend themselves to every reader. We have
called to our aid the two foremost Italian scholars in
England and the United States — William Michael Ros-
setti and Charles Eliot Norton — whose pens have illum-
inated the study of the great subject to which they
have given so many years; and we have entrusted some
of the necessary introductions to scholars like Cardinal
Gibbons, Hon. S. G. W. Benjamin, Professor Maurice
Francis Egan, and Mr. William S. Walsh. The illus-
trations have been chosen, or designed, not for their
pictorial beauty alone, but for actual assistance to the
text, and have been made under the highest develop-
ment of the art of photogravure.

No reasonable reader will expect to get the whole of

VI

GENERAL PREFACE

a great literature in sixteen volumes; but we believe
that, with our own knowledge and that of trustworthy
advisers, such a selection is here made as presents the
heart and soul of Italian letters from Dante to D'An-
nunzio. By this the reader may become familiar not
only with Italy's literary genius but also with much of
her history and the character of her people through five
hundred active and progressive years. In Dante's Vita
Nuova, Boccaccio's La Fiammetta, and the Sonnets of
Petrarch and Michelangelo he may see that poetic
power, here inspired by the grand passion, which is
recognized as the first growth in nearly every national
literature. In the Orlando Furioso and the Jerusalem De-
livered he sees the same faculty make its first advance
to tales of war and chivalry. In Machiavelli's The
Prince and Castiglione's The Courtier is revealed the phi-
losophy of monarchical government in their day; in
Guerrazzi's Beatrice Cenci, Manzoni's Ttie Betrothed, and
Grossi's Marco Visconti the power and the terror of feud-
alism even in its later stages; in Cellini's Memoirs, the
life of the sixteenth century among artists, artisans,
court characters, and the common people; and in
Serao's The Conquest of Rome and D'Annunzio's The
Flame highly illuminated views of modern Italian court-
ship, intrigue, and political life. Pellico's story of his
imprisonment under Austrian tyranny, and Mazzini's es-
says on the final struggle for Italian independence and
liberty, are inextinguishable lights of modern history.
Italy's stage is represented by Goldoni's comedies and
Alfieri's tragedies ; and many fine examples of her lighter
literature have been gathered in the anthology volume.

GENERAL PREFACE vii

It will thus be seen that this series is not confined to
any one branch of literature, but represents all in fair
proportion. With a lucid history of Italy's literature
for the opening volume, the other fifteen fall naturally
into three sections : first, Poetry, the Drama, and Belles-
lettres; second, Essays, Memoirs, and Historical Ro-
mance; and third, Fiction.

Whether we here listen to the steadfast lovers of long
ago, or the thunder of the guns from the Castle of Saint
Angelo, or the wail of pestilence in the streets of Milan,
or the sighs of prisoners in the leaden cells of the Ducal
Palace, or the whisperings of conspirators and bravoes,
or the gossip of the modern boudoir, or the trumpet-call
to freedom, it is all Italy— Italy and her glorious
literature.

(y^TT^ /

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Wedding of the Doge and the Adriatic . Frontispiece

The Presentation of Petrarch and Laura to the Emperor

Charles IV . 61

Portrait of Galileo Galilei . 353

CONTENTS

?AC1

INTRODUCTION xiu

CHAPTER I— The Origin of Italian Literature .... i

CHAPTER II— The Great Tuscans of the Trecento . . 34

CHAPTER III — Beginnings of the Renaissance ... 76

CHAPTER IV— The Renaissance 97

CHAPTER V— The Last Stage of the Renaissance ... 130

CHAPTER VI— The Classic Age of Italian Literature . 157

CHAPTER VII— Literature in the Time of the Catholic

Reaction 201

CHAPTER VIII— The Decline of Letters and the Rise of

Scientific Studies 228

CHAPTER IX— The Revival zZ5

CHAPTER X — Classicists and Romanticists 299

CHAPTER XI— The Literature of New Italy 346

INDEX 363

INTRODUCTION TO ITALIAN
LITERATURE

^••r1 WO things are highly remarkable about the Ital-
/"• ian language and its literature: First — that
m^L 1 this language was the latest of all the modern
European tongues to have any literature what-
ever; and, Second — that as soon as it began to have a
literature, it distanced all those other languages and
borrowed nothing more from them — left them so far be-
hind that Italian was the consummate voice of the me-
diaeval world, on an equality with the expired or ex-
piring literatures of Greece and Rome, and in some sense
even surpassing them, while all the other literatures of
the time became by comparison exercises in child's play.
The reason for this is, that one particular man was
born in Florence, and wrote in the most malleable of the
Italian dialects, the Florentine — Dante Alighieri. With
his advent, the Italian literary language became Tus-
can, or indeed Florentine, which was less distant from
Latin than the other dialects.

Of the modern tongues founded upon Latin, the first
to develop a literature was the Provengal. The French,
Spanish, and Portuguese all preceded the Italian. This
is to be accounted for on the ground, chiefly, that the
Italian dialects of that time were more largely infused
than the other Continental vernaculars with the half-
obsolete Latin, and therefore Latin, such as it was, oc-
cupied the literary field in Italy. Several Italians, such
as Sordello, wrote in Provencal. There is nothing that
can properly be called Italian earlier than about 1220,
when some writers began in Palermo, in the court of

xiil

xiv INTRODUCTION

the splendid Emperor Frederick II, himself a leader in
the movement. These poets were of a courtly stamp,
tending to the vapid; but there were others of a more
robust and popular kind, as known to us in the Con-
trasto of Cielo del Carno (commonly termed Ciullo d'Al-
camo), which has often been spoken of as the earliest
known specimen of Italian (or Sicilian) verse. It is not
anterior to 1231, thirty-four years preceding Dante's
birth in 1265.

From Sicily Italian poetry began to spread elsewhere.
St. Francis of Assisi, Fra Jacopone da Todi, Dante da
Majano, who was a Tuscan, wrote Italian verse; and
some Tuscans, such as Folgore da San Gemignano and
Cecco Angiolieri (the latter may be regarded as the
earliest positive humorist in any modern language) in-
troduced a certain element of satirical banter. Guittone
d'Arezzo (born about 1235) was originally of the Sicilian
school of verse, and he afterward took to Tuscan modes.
He probably first settled the form of the sonnet, which
is at any rate an Italian invention. Italian likewise are
the terza rima (seemingly invented by Dante) and the
octave stanza, which Boccaccio, though he did not origi-
nate it, first used in a long composition, the Tcseide,
the oldest of Italian romantic poems. This is a great
record of verse-forms for one nation to claim as its own ;
for the sonnet is to this day the most perfect model for
a short poem at once lyrical and reflective, and the octave
stanza imbues prolonged narrative with unmatched
spirit; while it is difficult to conceive that any meter
other than terza rima could exactly suit the stupendous
extra-mundane subject and scale of the greatest and
most arduous invention in the realm of poetry, La Com-
media Divina.

Let me mention here a few other origines in Italian
literature. The first important piece of prose in that
language was La Vita Nuova of Dante, about 1292. This,

XV

however, had been preceded by the Composisione del
Mondo of Ristoro d'Arezzo, toward the middle of the
thirteenth century. The very earliest known Italian
prose comes from Siena (1231). The first European
prose-romance is the Filocopo of Boccaccio, about 1339;
it is high-flown and verbose, and would be dubbed in-
tolerably pedantic if a merely modern standard of ap-
preciation could be applied to it. This was succeeded
by La Fiammctta, a romance of sentiment quite unex-
ampled in European literature, and with little to suc-
ceed it in a similar line until we come to La Nouvelle
Helo'ise of Rousseau. If we could here include Boccac-
cio's Latin writings, we must again pronounce him a
marked originator in his De Gencalogia Deorum, and his
De Claris Mulieribus, in which he became the first his-
toriographer of women. Of drama there was some faint
beginning in the thirteenth century, not continued until
the fifteenth; which also first gave birth to the Canti
Carrascialeschi, or Carnival-chants, in which Lorenzo de'
Medici was an adept. Machiavelli and Guicciardini, late
in that century, are the chief pioneers in the science of
history; followed by Giambattista Vico, in the eight-
eenth century, with his broad and fertile generalizations
basing history upon nations rather than upon individu-
als, and showing necessary sequences of development,
afterward utilized by Comte and Schelling.

In speaking of Italian literature, one has to recur time
after time to that astounding protagonist, phenomenon,
and hero, Dante Alighieri. If one were to say that Italian
literature consists of Dante, it would no doubt be an
exaggeration, and a gross one, and yet it would con-
tain a certain ultimate nucleus of truth. Dante fixed
the Italian language; and everyone had to tread in his
vestiges. He embodied all the learning and thought of
his age, and transcended them; he went far ahead of
all his poetic predecessors, contemporaries, and sue-

xvl INTRODUCTION

cessors; He wrote the first memorable book in Italian
prose; he wrote a critical exposition in the Convito and
(in Latin) a linguistic treatise (the DC Vulgari Eloquio,
which upholds the Vulgare illustrc, or speech of the best
cultivated classes, markedly in Tuscany and Bologna,
against the common dialects), and a political study (De
Monarchic,) of the most fundamental quality, which even
to us moderns continues to be sane and convincing in
its essence, though its direct line of argument has col-
lapsed; and finally, and most important by far, he pro-
duced in La Commedia Divina the one poem of modern
Europe that counterbalances Shakespeare and challenges
antiquity. This is the sole book that makes it a real
pity for anyone to be ignorant of Italian. Regarded
singly, it is much the most astonishing poem in the
world ; dwarfing all others by its theme, pulverizing most
of them by its majesty and sustainment, unique in the
force of its paraded personality and the thunderous re-
verberation of its judgments on the living and the dead.
That personality — the fact that Dante is the hero of
his own poem, although his scene is laid in Hell, Pur-
gatory and Paradise — is one of the most conspicuous
things about the work. Victor Hugo has devoted to it
one of his glorious laconisms, picturing Dante as knock-
ing at the door of Infinity, and saying, "Open! I am
Dante!" He did not add "The door is opened," but he
might very well have done so. It is curious to speculate
as to what might have been the destiny of the Italian
language and literature if Dante had submitted to the
advice of Guido Cavalcanti, and had written the Corn-
media Divina in Latin instead of in Italian. Even before
the Commedia was undertaken, Italian had a sufficiency
of literary and poetic development to permit of the trans-
ition to Petrarch in the succeeding century; but much
would have been missing in the way even of linguistic
development, and Italian poetic speech would to this

INTRODUCTION

xvn

day be without its world-monument. Meanwhile, in the'
decay of Latin as a language of literary interchange, the
Latin- worded Commcdia would itself have fallen very
much out of currency.

The vicissitudes of Dante's writings — I speak especial-
ly of the Commcdia Dirina — have been observable. Be-
fore the Commcdia was completed, or was at all known to
the public, Dante was sentenced by the authorities of
Florence to be burned alive, should he return thither.
One of the most awful reflections that the history of any
literature presents to us — the condemnation of Socrates,
who had done his work — is nothing to this. But, not
long after Dante's death in exile, 1321, the Florentines
came to understand that he was the chief glory of their
state, and a lectureship was endowed for expounding his
works, Boccaccio being the first lecturer. Still, the en-
thusiasm must have been limited. Petrarch in his old
age, about 1370, confessed that he never had read the
Commedia Dizina; and he may have left unperused the
copy that Boccaccio sent him. Before the middle of
the fifteenth century Dante, though never other than
a great name, had ceased to be a great personal presence
to Italian readers; and in the sixteenth century men's
minds were occupied with a very different order of poets,
an Ariosto and a Tasso, as well as by the persistent
dribbling of a Petrarcan influence. One may reflect with
pleasure that about this period two great artists were
among the truest devotees of Alighieri — Botticelli and
Michelangelo; and much later another, William Blake,
learned Italian for the express purpose of studying him
and designing from him. Marini and his mannerisms
occupied the seventeenth century, and the eighteenth
was more concerned with prose than with poetry, and
at last with Alfieri's dramas. It was not till the great
renovation forthcoming from the French Revolution
that Dante became the dominant spirit throughout Italy ;

XV111

INTRODUCTION

and afterward a very puissant ruler of thought in other
countries — England and Anglo- America foremost among
these. Ruskin had something to do with this valuable
result. This is a superb testimony to the depth and uni-
versality of Dante's human personal genius; for we see
that, just when his formulated conception of Hell, Pur-
gatory, and Paradise, and of other matters of defined
faith, was losing its hold upon mankind, he reemerged
into a supremacy that certainly no other poet of modern
Europe, save only Shakespeare, can divide with him.
We might almost re-apply the utterance : "Destroy this
temple [the dogmatic structure of the Commedia Divina],
and in three days I will raise it up." And we might
add with St. John: "But he spake of the temple, not
indeed of his body but of his soul."

The beginnings of Italian poetry, just before the time
of Dante, who arrived couronner I' edifice, had obtained
some approach to a real achievement, in the work, which
had partly a philosophical bearing, of the Bolognese
Guido Guinicelli, and in that of Cino da Pistoja and
Guido Cavalcanti, with whom it became expressly Tus-
can:

Cosi ha tolto I'uno all' altro Guido
La gloria della lingua; e forse e nato
Chi I'uno e I' altro cascera di nido.

as Dante wrote, rightfully understanding his own as-
cendancy.

The successor to Dante was Petrarch, born in 1304;
far the more famous of the two during his lifetime, and
in some succeeding centuries of Italian poetry, and the
first man that can be regarded as a literary dictator in
Europe generally; learned according to the measure of
that age, though he knew not Greek, of which the study
was promoted principally by Boccaccio. Sweetness and
delicacy, not uncombined with depth of sentiment, al-

INTRODUCTION xix

ways expressed in perfect modulation and elegance of
form, may be termed the essence of Petrarch's verse ; and
hereby Italian poetry at once assumed a vast executive
superiority over whatsoever was to be found in other
regions of Europe. Like Dante, Petrarch was a pas-
sionate advocate of the national claims of Italy, and he
has even been pronounced the better Italian of the two,
as relying less upon systematic theory to uphold his na-
tionalism. Though Dante's love-poems for Beatrice may
be the more beautiful, those of Petrarch for Laura ex-
hibit more distinctly the passion of love. Their appeal
proved universal; and to write sonnets a la Petrarch be-
came an amusing — sometimes perhaps a genuine and
moving— exercise for Italian versifiers for the ensuing
three centuries and more, and not for Italians only.
Even Michelangelo was in a measure a Petrarchist in
his verse. With Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was
established the golden age of the trcccntisti; to which,
even after its direct influence had waned, linguistic pur-
ists recurred, as to the highest standard of Italian
diction. Petrarch and his successors, sometimes little
better than imitators, must be regarded as the main
stream of the national poetry, varied, however, by other
currents, which I proceed to indicate.

Humorous poetry, of which we have already noticed
some trace, was pursued in the fourteenth century in
the work of Bonichi, Antonio Pucci, and others; hardly
at all by Boccaccio, notwithstanding his mastery of
humor in prose, as often shown in the Decameron. In
the fifteenth century, which was universally a much less
productive period for poetry than the fourteenth, the
chief masters are Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano.
Lorenzo "the Magnificent" is remarkable for having
taken with zest to a popular style of poetry, including
the canti carnascialcsehi, already mentioned, and rispett:.
In Tuscany there is a whole side-literature of rispetti and

xx INTRODUCTION

stornelli — special forms of verse, usually folk-songs in
the strictest sense, surprisingly notable for delicate and
forcible emotion and for charm of phrase. But some
while before the end of the fifteenth century a new
movement in Italian poetry was in active operation. It
may be called the third main government. The first was
Dante, the unapproachable and solitary; the second, Pe-
trarch and his school ; the third, the romantic or chivalric
epic, with which we have now to deal. This form of
narrative poetry had in fact made a vigorous beginning
with the Tvseide and Filostrato of Boccaccio (which
Chaucer drew upon for his Palamon and Arcitc and his
Troylus and Cryseyde). It afterward remained much in
abeyance until Pucci renewed its currency, mainly in
a humorous vein; and he served to inspirit Luigi Pulci,
who, at the instance of the mother of Lorenzo de' Me-
dici, wrote the Morgante Maggiore. This is a tale of the
Paladin Roland (Orlando, in Italian) and a giant; and
it makes very diverting reading, in virtue of its combina-
tion of chivalric subject ana adventure with a large
xirnount of rollicking burlesque. The same Carlovingian
cycle of legend appears in the Orlando Innamorato of
Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano. Here the inci-
dents, which are most numerous and varied, seem to
be mainly Boiardo's own invention; and the humorous
element can hardly be said to appear at all, the tone
throughout being martial and exalted, in a true though
now overripe spirit of chivalry. The same theme was
taken up soon afterward by Ariosto, whose Orlando
Furioso is, properly speaking, a sequel — and, even so,
not fully a completion— of Boiardo's series of adventures.
The great importance attached by Italians to nicety of
literary form and Tuscan usage in diction, appears in
the fact that, soon after Ariosto's work had appeared,
that of Boiardo was regarded as deficient in those re-
spects, and a Tuscan, Francesco Berni, re-fashioned it,

INTRODUCTION xxi'

making it perhaps more brilliant, and certainly more
amusing, by the insertion of various comic or semi-
comic touches, but on the whole rather lowering its tone
in the higher essentials. After Ariosto came Bernardo
Tasso with the Amadigi, and Torquato Tasso with the
Gerusalcmme Liber ata; and with this the roll of Italian
epic poetry reached its culmination, although some out-
lying attempts of a later date, sometimes with a bur-
lesquing tendency, may be taken into account.

It will be seen that the chief figures here, after allow-
ing for Boccaccio as precursor, are Boiardo, Ariosto, and
Torquato Tasso. The last wrote as the sixteenth cen-
tury was nearing its close. They all adopted Boccaccio's
meter the octave stanza. Boiardo was the most earnest
and chivalric; Ariosto the most profuse, various, and
stirring, and extremely attentive to the graces of lan-
guage and presentment. Tasso essayed something dif-
ferent from Ariosto, and higher. Ariosto, along with
interludes of sprightliness, and even of license, spins his
web out of mere adventure — endless combats of a heroic
and not quite credible kind, enchanted castles and hip-
pogriphs and flights to the moon; much love-making;
some touching episodes of sentiment, as those of Olim-
pia, Zerbino and Isabella, and sometimes Bradamant.
The personages are conformed skilfully to certain types,
but there are few that can be called characters — Rodo-
mont, perhaps, and at some moments Orlando. There
is a fascinating diversity of incident, but not of ulti-
mate outlook. It must be said, however, that this poem
by Ariosto, combined with that of his predecessor Boi-
ardo, is so consummate a success in its own line that
nothing else in European poesy can compare with it;
and the combined Orlando is certainly by far the most
entertaining long poem in any language.

Tasso undertook a nobler and more exacting theme —
one of the great events of history, the first Crusade. He

xxii INTRODUCTION

sympathized deeply with his subject, and has not wholly
ignored historical fact in the development of it; but he
had not the intensity of purpose needed for keeping it
up to the standard of epical narrative, and what are
most remembered in his work are its fanciful em-
broideries and episodical beguilements, on the lower
Ariostean level — an enchanted forest, an unexplored re-
treat for the loves of Armida and Rinaldo, and the like.
His characters are more engaging than Ariosto's; his
invention, if less profuse, is hardly less facile; his ex-
quisiteness of style and modulation is at least equal.
But on the whole his poem is the less good of the two,
for it is the less self-consistent. Ariosto fully achieved
what he intended ; Tasso intended something better than
he achieved, and something different. The question of
superiority between Ariosto and Tasso has exercised
many Italian critical pens.

Meanwhile there had been a plentiful literary develop-
ment in other directions. Prose narrative, in the form
of short tales or anecdotes, had begun as early as the
thirteenth century, with the Cento Novelk Antiche, fol-
lowed by Boccaccio's Decameron and the collections of
Sachetti, Bandello, Cinthio, and several others. Dino
Campagni's Chronicle, coming down to 1312, may not im-
probably be a genuine document of its period, though
this point has been much contested of late years ; and he
was succeeded by the historians Giovanni and Matteo
Villani, Camillo Porzio, and others. Pastoral literature,
an artificial and tedious class of work, yet not incapable
of exercising a certain charm, in which its defects count
for almost as much as its beauties, began with the Ar-
cadia of Sannazaro, and was continued by Tasso and
Guarini. Drama was attempted and forcibly upheld,
though not preeminently achieved, by Poliziano, Tris-
sino, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Pietro Aretino, and Tasso.
The letters of St. Catherine of Siena (fourteenth cen-

INTRODUCTION xxjjj

tury), and the prose chivalric romance / Reali di Francia
by Andrea di Barberino (fifteenth century), ought not
to be left wholly out of account; and the Italian novel-
ettes of the sixteenth century were far in advance of
anything produced elsewhere. It has been said, and
truly, that before the middle of the sixteenth century
Italy alone possessed a perfect literary language, and for
a hundred years her authors remained the models for
Europe, England included. Such is the potency of a
few men of genius, producing their works in an intel-
lectual and social environment that induces men of talent
and cultivation to follow in their footsteps.

Omitting Dante, whom no successor even distantly
rivaled, we see that Italian poetry, beginning with such
men as Frederick II, Guinicelli, and Petrarch, continued
to expand, and in some respects to improve, until it cul-
minated in Torquato Tasso. After him there was no
advance, but manifest retrogression. Giambattista Ma-
rini was born in Naples in 1569. It is quite possible to
undervalue Marini, the author of the Adone and much
other verse. He was a brilliant writer, and a thorough-
ly accomplished master of verse, not without some of the
gifts of a true poet. He was over-ingenious in turn of
thought and expression, over-glittering in poetic manner,
over-loaded with conceits ; and much of what he has left
us is little better than showy verbiage with a residuum
of forced sense or practical nonsense. If his contem-
poraries and successors had been content to rate him
as a vastly clever fellow, who must be privileged to ex-
press himself in his own way, though but partially rea-
sonable, all would have gone well. Unfortunately Ma-
rini and Marinism became popular, and Italian verse be-
came a forcing-plot for rearing rhyme-plants more and
more aberrant and irrational. Verse ceased to be one
of the means for communication of common sense. If
Marini had been whimsical, his successor must be futile,

xxiv INTRODUCTION

and the next successor fatuous. There were of course
exceptions — Chiabrera, Filicaja, and others. The painter
Salvator Rosa was a brilliant satirist, and Tassoni, with
his Secchia Rapita, was a satirical narrator who did a
good stroke of work. But on the whole the Italian poe-
try of the seventeenth century became very much like
a quaking bog, which literary explorers of the present
time deem better avoided than footed.

Such a state of things could not endure forever. A
reform came in the eighteenth century with Guiseppe
Parini, a Milanese, the author of 77 Giorno, a poem writ-
ten in the sarcastic vein, ostensibly to extol, but in fact
to ridicule and denounce, the frivolous and partly vicious
daily life of good society. It was thus a reversion of the
most absolute kind from the realm of flimsy fancies
to that of solid sense and moral stability. This poem
is a model of consistently sustained irony, with an im-
portant purpose, superior to any other attempts in that
direction. Then came the operatic dramatists, Apostolo
Zeno and Pietro Metastasio (Trapassi), who made this
class of work a feature in poetic literature in a degree
not before attained, and hardly equaled subsequently.
Late in the eighteenth century appeared Vittorio Al-
fieri, with his numerous tragedies stamped with a Roman
patriotism and severity. To a countryman of Shakes-
peare, these tragedies must appear lacking in some of the
innermost fibers of drama; but for rigid (or indeed
monotonous) elevation and laconic concentration they
may challenge rivalry. The pen is sometimes almost
like the pen of Tacitus in verse.

We come now to the strictly modern period of poetry.
Ugo Foscolo, author of the Sepolcri; Vincenzo Monti,
author of the Dasvigliana; Manzoni, in his occasional
poems; Niccolini the tragedian, and some others as well,
deserve an amount of detailed consideration which I can-
not here apply to them. An exception must be made for

INTRODUCTION xxv

Giacomo Leopardi, the most pessimistic of thinkers and
bards, and one of the most glorious of the sons of the
Sun-god: "dark with excessive light," or luminous with
excessive darkness. A poor, wizened semi-hunchback,
the martyr of all physical ills: a transpiercing intellect,
a magician of words and numbers. In the age illustrated
by such masters of formative perfection as a Goethe, a
Heine, a Shelley, a Victor Hugo, Leopardi holds his
own with them all. Not, indeed, that the volume of his
poetry is large, nor the exterior subject-matter of it ex-
ceptionally high; but he infuses the whole of it with his
personality, his thought, his impeccable directness and
sufficiency of phrase, his unfailing music. If we set
aside Dante as being quite apart from comparison, and
also Ariosto and Tasso as having cultivated a wholly
different field of poesy, it is difficult to say that any
Italian poet can compete with Leopardi, until we fall
back upon Petrarch ; and even he is not a finer executant.
We are not all bound to pessimize with Leopardi; but

•

we ought to recognize that his pessimism is founded
upon basic truths, in the world of nature and of mind,
of great though not final cogency. One noticeable thing
about his writings is that, in spite of their unmitigated
gloom, they do not produce a depressing effect on the
reader. Despairing they are; but not narrowly cynical,
nor oblivious of great ideals. By solidity and unity of
thought, combined with brilliance of style, they brace
one up to suffer, if suffering it is to be. The "progress
of the species" was one of the numerous things that
Leopardi did not believe in : and, before one wholly dis-
sents from him, one has to forget Job, Homer, ^Eschylus,
Phidias, Plato, Buddha, Julius Caesar, Dante, Joan of
Arc, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and not a few others.
Leopardi has left a larger amount of prose than of verse ;
and prose so admirable in balance and in pungency that

xxvi INTRODUCTION

some competent judges have pronounced him to be the
very best prose-writer among Italians.

Leopardi died, still young, in 1837. Since that date
there have been excellent poets and novelists in Italy;
Guiseppe Giusti, Giosue Carducci; and, of quite recent
living authors, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Pascoli, Ada Negri,
De Amicis, Verga, and Matilde Serao. These ought to
be read by anyone bent upon understanding thoroughly
the nature and development of Italian literature.

In the sixteenth century, Baldassare Castiglione, au-
thor of // Cortigiano, Giorgio Vasari, the historian of
Italian fine art, and Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor and
jeweler, most racy of autobiographers, are prominent
and unforgettable. In the seventeenth century, Galileo,
illustrious in the roll of science, was, even as a master
of prose style, highly distinguished. In the eighteenth
century, Cesare Beccaria's book, Dei Delitti e delle Pene
("Crimes and Their Penalties") was the first serious at-
tempt to introduce a reform into the grossly brutal
criminal codes of Europe generally; and Carlo Goldoni,
who wrote more than one hundred and fifty comedies,
often in Venetian dialect, was the best comic dramatist
ever produced in Italy, and was not wholly unworthy
of being compared with such authors as Moliere, Con-
greve, and Sheridan, though of a simpler order of mind,
less searching, and satisfied with an easier result. In
the early nineteenth century came Alessandro Manzoni,
who, with his romance I Promessi Sposi ("The Be-
trothed"), figures as the leader of the romanticist party
in Italy, following upon the initiative given by Walter
Scott. He was succeeded by various historical novelists,
of more than moderate credit; but it is a fact that ro-
manticism is not much in the innate genius of the Ital-
ian nation. A very influential author in the way of po-
litical and ethical literature was Vincenzo Gioberti,
writer of the Primato d'ltalia and other works, who died

INTRODUCTION xxvii

about the middle of the century. Far more important
as a personality is Giuseppe Mazzini, the prime hero of
the Italian unity and renovation (though the claim of
Napoleon Bonaparte should not be entirely forgotten, as
Englishmen continually do forget it). Mazzini wrote a
great amount of good literature, always national in
spirit, but often dealing with themes not directly political.
In history, in the last two centuries, there were Mura-
tori, Botta, Colletta, Balbo, Villari, and others; in Ital-
ian literary history, Tiraboschi and Mazzucabelli, fol-
lowed by Giudici, De Sanctis, Bartoli, Settembrini, and
some besides.

A slight glance should here be thrown at the literary
Academies, which played so large a part in Italian let-
ters in the period of decline. The Arcadia of Rome,
founded in 1690, aimed, so far as its aim was self-con-
scious, at a return to simplicity. For this laudable pur-
pose it set up a "pastoral" machinery; and not unnatur-
ally it drifted away into the empty and the barren. There
were a great number of academies all over Italy, similar
to the Arcadia; and they all, in practice if not in theory,
fostered an artificial standard of work, and a pretentious
if partially refined outcome — pitfalls into which Italians,
when left to themselves, are but too prone to plunge.
Late in the eighteenth century, and early in the nine-
teenth, an energetic movement began, partly but not
wholly pedantic, for upholding the purity of the Italian
language, and the purist i were greatly in evidence for a
long series of years. Antonio Cesari, of Verona, was a
leader in this movement, an advocate of recurrence to
the aurei trecentisti. Monti was equally prominent, but
his standard was the lingua illjistre rather than the Tus-
can trecento.

A very able historian of Italian literature on a com-
pendious scale, the late Richard Garnett, formulated
the conclusion that, both in poetry and in prose, the

INTRODUCTION

'dominant aim of the writers has always been perfect
form and artistic finish. This seems to be not far from
the truth. But here once again we must make an ex-
ception for the one supreme man, Dante. That he both
valued and realized form and finish, is obvious enough;
but these were far from being the goal of his effort.
What he most desired, as intensely as any poet in any
language, was to deliver an all-important message. He
brought to his task austerity of thought and of speech,
and an almost unmatched faculty for clothing his con-
ceptions in a vesture of words the most terse, direct,
chiseled, and monumental. In this, form and finish were
involved; but they were not primary, hardly even sub-
sidiary.

A HISTORY OF
ITALIAN LITERATURE

FRANCESCO FLAMINI

author of this volume — scholar, historian, and critic —
is one of the most learned and most industrious of the
living writers of Italy. Though he is still young, he
has published, besides the admirable History of Italian
Literature here presented, the following works: The Tuscan
Lyric of the Renaissance, before the period of Lorenzo the Mag-
nificent (1891); A Biographical Review of Italian Literature
(1893); The Pastoral Poetry of Luigi Tansillo (1893); Gleanings
of Erudition and Criticism (1895); Italian Literature from 1868
to 1898; First Steps in the Study of the Divine Comedy; Hidden
Meanings in the Divine Comedy; studies in the History of Ital-
ian and of Foreign Literature; and Miscellaneous Essays
(1905) ; and The Fifteenth Century (1906). His profound knowl-
edge of his subject, clear style, and fine editorial faculty give
his books a high value and make it a satisfaction to consult them
and a delight to read them.

CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF ITALIAN LITERATURE

HE Italian language," writes Pio Rajna, "is,
with certain modifications and admixtures,
the Florentine dialect, which, on account of
its own innate power, of geographical and
historical opportunities, and of the excellence of the
writers that employed it, eventually prevailed over all
the other dialects of our nation." All these dialects "are
the perpetuation, changed in various ways in time and
space, of the spoken language of Rome."

But, subjecting to her rule countries that were also
ethically different from herself, Rome performed a work
of political, as well as of linguistic, unification. In those
regions where there were not, as in Greece, glorious liter-
ary traditions, which sufficed to defend the native speech,
and where the Roman dominion was firmly established
and was of long duration, the language of the conquerors
was imposed on the conquered. This language was the
popular Latin, something midway between the speech of
the aristocracy and that of the lowest plebeians; it was
substantially uniform, and gradually took the place of the
preexisting idioms. But the national divergences, to be
expected in countries of such different linguistic habits,
went on increasing — at first, slowly, then, after the fall
of the Roman Empire and the consequent lapse of po-
litical unity, with far greater rapidity and intensity. The
result was the Romance or Neo- Latin language — Italian,
French, Provencal, Catalan (Spanish, Portuguese, Rou-
manian and Ladin). The close relationship of these
tongues is a tie which must always unite in fraternal

• 1

2 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

fellowship the peoples of Italy, France, a large part of
Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Rumania, and the -canton of
the Orisons in Switzerland. The continuity of the pop-
ular Roman language in these idioms, as well as in their
subordinate dialects, is even more manifest from their
analogous grammatical structure than from their lexical
conformity.

In Italy, whence the Latin language had been spread
by conquest, the spoken tongue continued to diverge
from it more or less according to provinces : rapidly and
widely in Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia; slightly and
slowly in Tuscany, where the Latin sound has been pre-
served with marvelous fidelity. The most noteworthy
changes to which the ancient idiom of Latium has been
subjected, especially after the sixth century, in the usage
of the Italians, are : First, the substitution of paraphras-
tic forms, by means of the so-called sign-cases (prepo-
sitions to point out the cases of nouns) for the ancient
declension ; secondly, the loss of the neuter gender and of
the passive form of the verbs, for which was gradually
substituted the use of the auxiliary essere with the past
participle; thirdly, the acquisition of the present perfect,
pluperfect, and conditional moods; with the birth of a
new form of the future, in place of the old, by the agglu-
tination and ultimate fusion of the infinitive of each verb
with the present indicative of the auxiliary avere (lodare-
ho, lodarb, loderb) ; fourthly, the formation of numerous
adverbs by means of the termination mente (ablative of
wens). The domination of the barbarians has imported
not a few foreign words into the lexicon, especially Ger-
man; but such infiltrations have little effect in altering
the nature of a language.

As for writings, those Italians who composed such
deeds or documents in the Middle Ages as have come
down to us were determined to use only Latin ; and this,
too, even in cases where, in their ignorance, they were evi-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 3

dently groping their way, and where, beneath the hybrid
and artificial language they imposed upon themselves,
can be plainly discerned, from some vocable, or construc-
tion, or name of person or place, the speech of this or
that province. In order to find an entire period in the
vernacular deliberately consigned to writing, we must
come down to the years 960 and 964, to which belong a
charter of Capua and a charter of Teano, each contain-
ing textual words which had to be pronounced by wit-
nesses. We are unable to discover any other until about
a century later. And even later — that is, until the be-
ginning of the thirteenth century — documents of this
kind are very rare. Not until 1211 was the use of the
vernacular in certain departments of writing attested by
some fragments of a register belonging to Florentine
bankers.

As the language of the common people was held of
such little account that it was not employed in writing,
even for purely practical ends, it was natural that it
should not make its appearance in literary documents
until a still later period. In the provinces of the ancient
Empire, on the other hand, the absence of any very deep-
seated consciousness of Romamta (that is, of a Roman
character and origin), the more considerable ethnic ad-
mixture introduced by the invasions of the barbarians,
the political organization that had been established long
before anything of the same kind prevailed in Italy, all
contributed to give an impulse to a native culture, and
led to the employment of the new idioms for the pur-
poses of art: the Neo-Latin literatures most closely re-
lated to our own — that is, the French and the Provencal —
sprang to life in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and
were flourishing in the twelfth. Meanwhile, Italian liter-
ature began only in the thirteenth century, and for the
following reasons : we always felt that we were Romans,
and we wished to remain Romans ; the Latin culture was

4 FRANCESCO FLAM1N1

ours ; it was long before we could be induced — and then
reluctantly — to abandon a glorious tongue which recorded
our past grandeur, and which the Roman Church had
consecrated in her liturgies.

The torch of Latin thought never was extinguished hi
Italy. Seemingly, the ancient culture had been hurled
headlong into the abyss into which the Roman world had
been precipitated. But even then, Italy always rose su-
perior to the other parts of the Empire; and while in
Africa, Spain, and Gaul this civilization fell into decrepi-
tude, in Italy under Teodorico, King of the Goths,
Boethius and Cassiodoro represented nobly the culture
of the Latin race. During the Lombard dominion, there
was a return of gloomier times for our civilization ; never-
theless, even in those years, the worship of the past con-
tinued to dwell in Italian hearts. Nor were cultivators
of Latin studies wanting amid the stormy vicissitudes
of the close of the ninth century. The frequent recur-
rence is very remarkable of the venerated memories of
Troy, Rome, and the Capitol in the lofty and stern
Latin verses in which a scholar of this period (a clcrkus)
encouraged the Modenese, his fellow-citizens, to keep
on the alert, with their arms on their shoulders.

In the tenth century also, in the midst of political and
social conditions that were most calamitous for our Italy,
we had scholars and writers. The anonymous panegyrist
of Berengario I clothes his hexameters, as well as his
heroes, in a classic coat of mail. Liutprando, Bishop of
Verona, is a Lombard by race and sentiment, but in
his principal work, a prose narrative of events from
888 to 950, interlarded here and there with verse, he
shows himself familiar with the ancient authors, the
Greek language and the legends of mythology. Gon-
zone, in the age of Otho the Great, supplies us with the
type of the combative humanist, who will be so frequent-
ly met with among us four centuries later — a type, too,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 5

that was already incarnated in those "philosophers," as
they were called, who, for trying to revive the thoughts
and sentiments that had perished with the ancient world,
sometimes ended their lives in dungeons or at the stake.

After the tenth century, the cultivation of antiquity,
so far as it is represented by the study of the classics
and the ambition of emulating them, no longer found in
Italy its best disciples ; the universities and convents be-
yond the Alps attracted everyone in Europe whose ob-
ject was a thorough drilling in poetic or rhetorical ac-
quirements by becoming familiar with the ancient
authors; and the names of Alano da Lille (.llanus de
Insulis), Giovanni di Salisbury (Joannes Sarisberiensis),
and of various other French and English scholars, flew
from mouth to mouth throughout Europe. Among us,
however, although theological studies were in a flourish-
ing condition in the eleventh century, especially as shown
in works of San Pier Damiano, literary productiveness
in Latin seems altogether inadequate, when contrasted
with the marvelous awakening of the national energy:
for instance, the long poem on the conquest of the
Balearic Isles, the authorship of which is uncertain, is
not much superior in style and versification to the pane-
gyric on Berengario I. The verses of Alfano, a monk of
Monte Cassino, though respectable for the age in which
they were written, were not widely diffused ; indeed, the
literary industry of the Benedictines of the famous abbey
appear to have had little influence outside its walls, if
we except that which was exercised in the epistolary art
by the writings of Frate Alberico (Rationes dictandi and
Brevlarium de dictamine). In epic poetry, there were only
versified chronicles, like the Vita Mathildis of Donizone;
in lyric poetry, there was nothing that approaches the
fresh and nimble measures attributed to the goliardi, or
wandering students, of France, Germany, and England.

But, to compensate for this, the influence of Roman

6 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

thought in the eleventh and twelfth centuries worked
effectively on the life of our people. Some precious
characteristics of the gentle Latin blood (latin sangue
gentile} still remained among them, and, chief of all, prac-
tical good sense and the keen intuition of reality. These
qualities found a stage ready for their development in
the Italian Communes. Neither did municipal strife ever
lead the various provinces to forget that they were, in
the words of Dante Alighieri, furrows in "the garden of
the Empire"; because our people always continued to
cherish, in the depths of their consciousness, the dream
of a united Italy, which should be mistress of the world,
This is rendered evident by more than one of the songs
that deal with historical subjects, songs that are the best
specimens of our mediaeval Latin poetry. These innate
energies of the Italic races were destined also to produce
splendid fruit in another field: the study of jurispru-
dence, after Irnerio, was pursued with astonishing vigor
in the eleventh century, especially at Bologna. Gram-
mar and rhetoric also made great progress in conse-
quence, for these branches were reputed to be necessary
for all who aspired to a knowledge of law and medicine.
Some gleams of light were reflected from this universal
culture of the upper classes upon the humbler strata of
Italian society in the Middle Ages, as was shown by
that refinement in manners and customs which attracted
the notice of foreigners. Without taking into considera-
tion this peculiar situation in the Italian laity in the
eleventh century, so different from that of every other
country, it would be impossible to understand how it
came to pass that, in less than two centuries, Italy could
have reached such a height, and have presented to aft
amazed world a layman like Dante, able to accomplish
in La Commedia Divina what no chierico had ever ven-
tured to attempt.
But all this culture of the Italians before the thirteenth

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 7

century has been revealed solely in Latin writings; in.
Latin also was composed a didactic poem which en-
joyed great favor during the Middle Ages, and which was
read in the schools, the Elegia de diversitate fortune et
philosophies consolatione (1192?) of Arrigo, born in Setti-
mello, near Florence. No literary documents in the vernac-
ular belonging to this period are to be found, unless we
assign to the close of the twelfth century a certain enig-
matic and symbolic set of verses, discovered at Monte
Cassino (Ritmo cassinese), in which a monk exhorts his
hearers, through the medium of a sort of apologue, to
despise this earthly life, and thereby win life eternal.
The poetry of art (poetry among us may also be re-
garded as having come before prose) appears in an Ital-
ian dress only in the thirteenth century, and its early
steps are guided by its maturer sisters of France and
Provence.

Nor should this excite our wonder. It was precisely
because the Italians had behind them an epoch of great
culture that they lacked those heroic traditions of ob-
scure and mythical origin which usually give the first
impulse to an original and national poetry. On the other
hand, the Roman tradition could at the time, by its own
agency, give life to a literary production only in Latin,
like that of which we have already spoken. In order
that poets of art should arise, using this or that dialect
of our peninsula, it was necessary that both the impulse
and the subject matter should come to them from else-
where ; it was necessary that the ideals of chivalry should
be artificially transplanted among us. These ideals were
common to European feudalism, but foreign to the free
populations of our Communes, who were indebted to
themselves alone for their civilization. The first Italian
versifiers, then, borrowed what they needed from the
two literatures that were flourishing beyond the Alps
and had been long universally admired; both being the

8

spontaneous product of a feudal and chivalrous society:
the French, or the literature in the langue d'o'il, and the
Provengal, or the literature in the langue d'oc; the latter
idiom was in use on this side of the Loire.

Provengal literature gave us the images and the forms
of the lyric of love before the age of Dante; French
literature supplied us with epic and didactic-allegorical
material. We are indebted to the imitation of the former,
which precedes in order of time, for the oldest documents
of our poetry of art.

After the eleventh century the popular poetry of Pro-
vence, though it never became extinct among the people,
had climbed from the market-place to the castles, and
was transformed into the genial expression of that ag-
gregate of ideas and sentiments of a refined and courtly
society which is denoted by the name of "chivalry."
Among the jongleurs, the troubadours, as poets of art,
devoted all their care to the task of polishing the verse,
giving a delicate turn to the strophe, and clarifying the
thought. They were nobles or burghers, clerici or lay-
men; they visited various courts, accompanied by
jongleurs of a lower grade, when they were unable to
sing their poems themselves. As these poems were al-
ways accompanied by music, perhaps the latter was the
greater attraction; the theme that was received with
most favor was that of chivalrous love, the devoted
homage of knight to lady, as of vassal to baron. We find,
in Bernardo di Ventadorn, Giraldo di Bornelhe, and some
others, passages of lofty poetry, verses inspired by gen-
uine affection, scattered among the commoplaces of a
courtly poetic school; Bertrando dal Bornio was really
what he seemed to Dante: an "illustrious singer of
arms;" although Arnaldo Danielle, judged by Dante to
be superior to all the others, because of his poetic arti-
fices, is no longer held in esteem, it can hardly be denied
that he is, in some respects, a remarkable poet.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 9

The lyric of the troubadours, which was in its fullest
flower in the second half of the twelfth century, met
with fitting and joyous welcome beyond the Pyrenees
and on this side of the Alps. Close political and com-
mercial relations had united upper Italy and Provence
from remote times. Various troubadours had already
descended among us toward the end of the twelfth cen-
tury; they were affably received in the northern courts
of the Peninsula, especially by the Marquesses of Mon-
ferrato. Pierre Vidal, about 1195, composed a poem at this
court which was distinctively inspired by Italian senti-
ment; Rambaldo de Vaqueiras, who was the recipient of
favors and honors from the Marquess Bonifacio II, is the
author of a bilingual dispute, in which a Genoese girl
of the people spurns in her own dialect the protestations
of love which the poet makes in Provengal; this work
was indited about 1190, and is therefore the oldest liter-
ary document in our vulgar speech. The number of
these troubadours increased in the first half of the thir-
teenth century, after the sanguinary crusade against the
Albigensian heretics had depopulated the south of France
and extinguished its flourishing civilization; the fugitive
poets found among us, at that time, a second fatherland ;
they became keenly interested in the political vicissitudes
of our country, and spread abroad throughout Italy the
gay art de trobar. And it was not long before (in imita-
tion of the Provencals) Italian troubadours, some of
whom were soldiers, others lawyers, sprang up in the
courts of our princes and in the trains of the magistrates
and judges of our Communes. Wherever the langue d'oc
was understood and appreciated by the polished society
for which they wrote, they were able to turn their knowl-
edge of it to account, and sometimes used it with master-
ly dexterity. In this fashion, the Marquess Alberto
Malespina, Lord of Lunigiana, vied in improvised poet-
ical contests with Rambaldo di Vaqueiras; Provencal

10 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

poems have been left us by Rambertino Buvalelli, a na-
tive of Bologna, who was the podesta of several places
in Upper Italy ; by Bonifacio Calvo and Lanfranco Cigala,
both Genoese, the latter having been judge and governor
of his native city; by Bartolommeo Zorzi, known es-
pecially by a canzone in which, while a prisoner at Genoa,
he defended his native Venice against the vituperation
of Calvo; and, among several others, by Sordello of
Mantua, highly honored by Dante in the Commedia, and
chiefly celebrated for a lament on the death of his pro-
tector, Blacasso.

While the troubadours were being imitated in Upper
Italy in their own language, an effort was made in other
parts of the peninsula to imitate them in Italian. In this
way did our language begin to test its powers as a liter-
ary medium. The Sicilian court of Federico II, the home
of chivalrous courtesy, was the natural asylum of this
our first poetic flowering, which was necessarily courtly
and polished, like the foreign lyric which inspired it;
hence the name of Sicilian poets was bestowed on those
who imitated the Provengal manner of writing poetry,
whether they were Sicilians or not. "And, because
Sicily was the seat of royalty," writes Dante in the De
Vulgari Eloquentia, "it came to pass that whatever our
predecessors produced in the vernacular was known as
Sicilian: indeed, we ourselves still retain the term, and
our descendants are not likely to be able to change it."
And, in fact, even to-day, when we speak of the Sicilian
school of poetry, we understand the entire lyric of Italy
before Dante : a lyric uniform in characteristics and poor
in sentiment, for it was but the reflex of an alien poetry,
and borrowed its material from a repertory of hackneyed
phrases and conventional images oftener than from truth
and reality. The rhymes of these imitators of the Pro-
vengal versifiers, whether they be the work of Roman,
Tuscan or Apulian, are always written in a poetic Ian-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE H

guage that is not peculiar to any city or province. The
imitation of the art of the troubadours, as Rajna well
observes, gave birth in the different regions of Middle
and Lower Italy to a kind of literary parlance, in which,
"beneath the variety, due to the indigenous dialects,
was a substantial conformity, resulting from the identity
of the models, the narrowness of the circle within which
minds were imprisoned, and the close association of ideas
produced everywhere by familiar personal intercourse."
Still, the provinces that brought the largest linguistic
and literary contribution to the lyric art in the vernac-
ular, of which the Swabian Court was the center, were
Sicily, Naples (in its widest signification) and Tuscany.
The Emperor Federico II himself (1194-1250), and his
sons Enzo and Federico of Antioch; Jacopo da Lentini,
notary of the court in 1233, generally regarded as the
leader of the Sicilian group ; Pier della Vigna, of Capua
(d. 1249), the principal counselor of the Emperor; Guido
delle Colonne, judge in his native city, Messina, between
1257 and 1277; Folcacchierro de' Folcacchierri of Siena
(d. before 1260); Arrigo Testa of Arezzo (ii94?-i247),
one of those nobles who acted as podesta in various lands,
all contributed to the diffusion that the lyric acquired in
the courts. They have bequeathed to us a poetic collec-
tion of Provencal imitations as copious as it is poor in
artistic value, if we except the meters, among them the
new and important sonnet.

We are more largely indebted to the langue d'oil, and
for something far superior: its epic and romantic sub-
stance.

In France the heroic ideal of feudal society had been
magnificently developed in the chansons de gcstc, in which
the Carolingian legend of the humble Chronicle of Saint
Gall soared to the heights of the Canzone d'Orlando
(Chanson de Roland, or Song or Roland). In course of
preparation from the times of Clovis, entering upon its

12 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

dawn with Charles Mattel, attaining its apogee under the
Emperor Charlemagne, and effectively renovated under
Charles the Bald and his first successors, the full develop-
ment of epic song on the other side of the Alps coincides
with the formative work of French nationality. During the
period in which the Gallo-Romans were amalgamating
with the Franks, and both becoming one people, the rec-
ord of common glories and common heroisms was sung at
court, and among nobles and warriors, in the new idiom
and the new meters of the Romanized Franks. Singers
fitted for the task, called jogkrs (Latin, joculares) or
jogledors (joculatores), that is to say, jongleurs, are known,
after the ninth century, to have made it their custom to
travel from castle to castle, and often to accompany
military expeditions, provided with a viol and a bow
very much curved. They spread far and wide the heroic
tales, connected them with one another, and often gave
them a certain degree of unity. Such was the origin
of the chansons de geste, or "songs of history,*' which,
bound together in strophes of unequal length by a com-
mon rhyme or assonance, were chanted by the jongleurs
and accompanied by a very simply melody on the vielle.
Among these chansons, the Song of Roland stands
out preeminent as an imposing and singular monument
in the history of civilization and poetry. A historical
fact of slight importance — the destruction of the rear-
guard of Charlemagne, on his return from a victorious
expedition into Spain, by the Basque mountaineers in
the pass of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees — altered and
magnified by romantic imaginations, became the center
of the Carolingian cycle, that is, of the stories that treat
of the deeds of Charlemagne and his paladins. In the
legend, the assailants are not Basques, but Saracens; a
Frank, Gano or Ganelon, betrays his companions; Ro-
land (Ital. Orlando), Count of the March of Brittany, one
of the three distinguished leaders that perished in the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 13

ambuscade, is transformed into the dauntless and ter-
rible protagonist and champion of Christendom, nephew
of the Emperor and first of the "twelve peers" ; and, fin-
ally, Charlemagne, who was thirty-six years old in 778,
is represented as a hoary patriarch of two hundred years,
but withal, as valiant as he is sage. The Song of Roland
has an almost childish simplicity in the redaction of
Turoldo, a trouvhc, perhaps a Norman or Anglo-Norman,
belonging to the second half of the eleventh century.
There is little art in it, but a good deal of real and
vigorous poetry. The narrative is involved and not free
from repetitions and diffuseness, but it fairly quivers
with religious and national enthusiasm. Those spirited
hendecasyllables (decasyllabics, according to the French
metre) succeed one another in rhythmic and uniform
movement, each enclosing a thought within itself, just
as the laisse encloses an epic scene.

The Song of Roland is a poem epically austere, without
any intrusion of chivalrous adventures or gallantries, the
poem of Christian feudalism in its struggle with the In-
fidel. Besides this, and other chansons of a pure, archaic
type, mediaeval France has supplied us with poems, no
longer the work of jongleurs, but of men of letters, in
which the subject-matter is taken from the strange ro-
mantic stories of the Graeco-Roman decadence. Thus,
from the Greek romance of the Pseudo-Calisthenes,
which, about the second century of our era, had accumu-
lated around Alexander the Great the marvels of the
Oriental tales, a long French poem was indirectly de-
rived, written in verse which, from the name of the hero,
was somewhat later called alexandrine; the Macedonian
hero is naively represented in the poem as a sort of
king-cavalier surrounded by his barons. In the same
way, Benedetto di Sainte More obtained from the widely
circulated romances of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys
the Cretan on the Trojan war the material for his Roman

14 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

de Troie in thirty thousand verses. The romances be-
longing to the cycles which share among them the trans-
Alpine narrative material of the Middle Ages, the British,
or Arthurian cycle, or cycle of the Round Table, possess
in common with these poems of the "cycle of antiquity"
the type of the "adventurous knight."

In England a national epic had grown up among the
Britons, or Celts who had survived the Roman conquest,
during the terrible and disastrous struggle they were
compelled to sustain against the Germanic invaders.
Some of the British singers, wandering through France,
brought thither, through the medium of short tales set
to music, the knowledge of their legends ; these were re-
peated in little French poems; finally, the "matter of
Britain" was utilized for an immense number of ro-
mances, which did not take their subjects — as did the
poems of the Carolingian cycle — from the great enter-
prises of nations and armies, but from the loves and ad-
ventures of which the Knights of the Round Table, who
encircled Arthur, were ever in quest. Famous above all
others were those which sing of Tristan and his love
for Isolt ; likewise, several bequeathed to us by Cristiano
of Troy, who has drawn from the British romance the
most perfect representation of the chivalrous ideals of
high French society in the twelfth century.

From the vast collection of these stories of the Round
Table, an Italian, whom we shall meet later, Rusticiano
da Pisa, made a compilation in French prose about the
year 1270. In the same fashion, the tales of the Carolin-
gian cycle gave rise, during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries in the Marca Trivigiana, or rather in all the
country "that Po and Adige water," to a harvest of
poems that are no longer French, and cannot yet be
styled Italian.

The knowledge of the tongue of oil was diffused
throughout Italy in the thirteenth century; but there

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 15

were fewer impediments to its use for literary purposes
in the northern part of the peninsula, as it was nearest
to France. There the trans-Alpine jongleurs, propagators
of the gcsta of Charlemagne, could not only be under-
stood, but imitated in their own language. However,
this language was gradually falling into local dialetic
sounds and forms on the lips of our jongleurs, while, at
the same time, the legendary matter was being enriched
by new inventions and was taking on new attitudes.
There was, in short, a Franco-Italian substance in a
Franco-Italian, or, more specifically, in a Franco-Vene-
tian language, and a kind of cyclic compilation of
Carolingian poems in this hybrid idiom has come down
to us, due to a very unpolished Venetian rhymester, in
which the deviations from the French texts are numer-
ous; the scene is sometimes laid in Italy, and, as in our
later poems or romances, the traitors are allied to the
house of Maganza, the loyal knights to that of Chiara-
monte.

With the Entree de Spagne, a vast poem by an anony-
mous Paduan, and with the Prise de Pampelune of Niccolo
of Verona, which is a continuation of it, the Italian chiv-
alrous epic takes a signal step on the road that will lead
it to the attainment of its own life. No French poem
had treated of the victorious expeditions of Charlemagne
into Spain before the ambuscade of Roncesvalles : the
Entree and the Prise make it their chief subject. Fur-
thermore, there is in the former a romantic episode
of which Roland is the protagonist, and which antici-
pates the fusion of the Carolingian matter with the
British, that was subsequently to take place among us?
in the latter, the author, who was not a plodding jongleur,
but a poet of art, aims at connecting the romance with
historical records (as another writer does later in the
Reali di Francia), not only by the consistent unity of
the narrative, but by welcoming, together with classic

16 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

reminiscences, the Italian national element also among
the Carolingian gesta, or, in other words, by introducing
a new hero: Desiderio, King of the Lombards. And in
both these poems figure types of characters that had a
large development in our romantic poetry: the cunning
and comical Estout, and the Astolfo of Boiardo and
Ariosto.

In this manner was elaborated the epic matter which
in the centuries following was to give rise to master-
pieces. The Prise and the other poems of Niccolo of
Verona, belonging already to the fourteenth century, are
composed in fairly good French, although intermingled
with Italian dialectic elements. In addition to these
poems, we have some of a more popular style, probably
intended to be recited by ballad-singers, in which, while
the idiomatic substance is Venetian, the surface is French
(Bovo d'Antona, Rainardo e Lesscngrino). And, almost con-
temporaneously, the street singers of Tuscany amused
the common folk with poetic narratives of the deeds of
Charles and his paladins (also, but not so often, with
those of the knights-errant of Arthur), written in the
dialect destined to become the literary language of this
province.

As has been said, the stimulus, as well as the models,
for didactic-allegoric poetry also came to us from France
in the thirteenth century. The example of Boethius and
of Marciano Capella, the allegorical treatises in Latin
of Alano da Lille, and, in short, the fondness of Mediae-
val minds for symbol and allegory, impelled Guillaume
di Lorris, and his continuator, Jean de Meung, to com-
pose in that century the enormous Romance of the Rose
(Roman de la rose), which is an allegorical representa-
tion, in the form of a vision, of the vicissitudes of love,
personified in their various moments and in the lasting
qualities and conditions of mind that determine them.
It was quickly diffused throughout Europe, and in Italy

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 17

several allegorical poems in the vernacular gave evidence
of its influence in the second half of the thirteenth cen-
tury: for instance, the Tesoretto of Brunette Latini, the
Documenti d'amore, and // reggimento e costumi di donna
of Francesco Barberino, and the Intelligensia.

The Tesoretto, of whose author we shall speak later, is
simply an abridgment, in rhymed Italian couplets, of a
part of the great French encyclopaedia of Latini himself.
The poetic and allegoric garb, as well as the form of a
journey through fantastic regions, was intended, no
doubt, to embellish and illustrate science; but, when it
does not darken it, it renders its aridity more sensible,
and makes its extravagance and subtlety more visible
to the eye. More important are the two poems of Fran-
cesco Barberino di Val d'Elsa (1264-1348), a notary, and
afterward a doctor of laws. He lived for some time in
France, and followed French and Provengal models in
the Documenti d'Amore, which consists of moral instruc-
tions imparted by Love through the medium of Elo-
quence, and in the Reggimento e costumi di donna, a dis-
sertation in verse of various measures, for the most part
unrhymed, and intermingled with prose. The author
teaches women the best way of conducting themselves
in their different states and conditions; he introduces
allegorical figures on the scene and points the moral by
means of pleasant little stories. In the second of these
poems, which belongs to the fourteenth century, if Ma-
donna, who is the principal personification, represents
universal intelligence, there is a close approach in the
subject of it to the Intelligensia, attributed to Dino Com-
pagni and undoubtedly written before it. There are three
hundred and nine strophes in nona rima, which derive
their title from the allegorical signification of the Lady
who is loved and described by the poet. She wears a
crown of sixty gems, the fabulous virtues of which are
enumerated by the author, according to the symboliza-
I

18 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tion of tfie lapidaries of the age; and she dwells in a
palace whose walls are lined with sculptures and pic-
tures, all representing ancient histories, which he ex-
pounds with great prolixity, especially that of Julius
Caesar, as was to be expected from a follower of French
models.

The celebrated Romance of the Rose also gave birth
to many imitations between the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury and the beginning of the fourteenth. Not to men-
tion a fragment in septenarian couplets (Detto d'Amore),
it has been abridged and skilfully condensed into two
hundred and thirty-two stanzas in the form of sonnets;
this abridgment is usually entitled // Fiore, and is at-
tractive because of the freedom of the language and
sentiment, and the life and force of the symbolical im-
ages themselves. It was adapted to the taste of Italian
readers by a certain Florentine named Durante (who
might even be Dante Alighieri!).

Besides the lyric of art — imitated from the Provengals,
the chivalrous epic, and the didactic-allegorical rehand-
ling of French material — there was at the beginning of
our literature a humbler but purely indigenous form of
poetry: that poetry which in every country springs
spontaneously from the heart of the people, and is after-
ward worked up and developed by unknown singers.
The documents of this poetry, in the form in which they
have been preserved for us, are always the workman-
ship of a plebeian versifier or of a jongleur who has suc-
ceeded in giving, in some fashion or other, literary form
and opportune effectiveness to the fugitive, and often un-
conscious, expressions of the individual sentiments of
the people; while the latter, on the other hand, finding
itself in his work, appropriates it, repeats it, and trans-
forms it in a thousand ways, according to its caprice.
Themes as simple as those which these singers caught
from the lips of the people itself might, like wild flowers,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 19

expand under the most diverse regions of heaven; and
so, in the medley of popular songs, it is not difficult,
when reascending the course of the ages, to discern a
certain number of subjects that are always and every-
where the special predilection of the vulgar, as for in-
stance, the lamentations of the monaca per forsa, of the
malmaritata, and of the fanciulla andante alle nosze. Such
were the subjects, then, of our popular amatory lyric
in the thirteenth century. We find them, with others
still more unseemly, in the coarsely plebeian ballate which
the Bolognese notaries used, absentmindedly, to mark
down here and there in their memoranda ; they are very
ancient examples of that form of poetry intended for
simultaneous singing and dancing, and are presented to
us in metrical forms which have the primitive rhythmical
and musical simplicity.

Certain versifiers of the Sicilian school also, who were
not averse to the modes and forms dear to the people,
like Giacomino, the Apulian, Odo delle Colonne, and
Rinaldo d' Aquino, looked favorably on these themes or
"motives." The lament which the last of these has
placed in the mouth of a woman abandoned by her hus-
band, or her crusader lover, develops, but with greater
art, the subject matter of an anonymous Lamcnto ddla
sposa paduana. The famous contrasto of Cielo d'Alcamo
(Rosa fresca aulentissima c'apari 'nver la state) in strophes
of three alexandrine verses on a single rhyme with the
first hemistich ending in two unaccented syllables, and
closing with a rhymed couplet of hendecasyllables, is a
dialogue between a petulant lover and his mistress, who,
while she fences with him, seems willing to surrender,
a dialogue of manifestly popular inspiration in manner,
meter and language. This contrasto, although not an-
terior to 1231, is certainly very ancient. In times still
more remote, a form of popular amorous poetry appears
to have sprung up in Sicily, belonging to every part

20 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

of Italy: the strambotti (erotic songs), which are short
cansoni of one or more stanzas of eight verses, all orig-
inally rhyming alternately (the so-called Sicilian oc-
taves), but later the first six rhyme alternately, and
the last two form a rhymed couplet (the common oc-
taves).

Furthermore, in the thirteenth century, and perhaps
even before, the vernacular was used in the literature of
the jongleurs, which propagated certain poetic forms
among all the Neo-Latin nations. In Italy, too, as well
as in France, series of verses, with the same rhyme, and
tetrastic strophes, likewise with the same set of rhymes,
were originally the commonest meters of narrative and
didactic popular poetry. The first rhyme-scheme oc-
curs in the cantilena of a Tuscan jongleur, belonging, per-
haps, to the twelfth century, and is employed in a little
Veronese poem on La passione e risurrezionc, as well as
in other non-lyrical compositions of the thirteenth cen-
tury. The second is not only an adjunct of the meter
of certain proverbs on the character of women, which,
together with an ascetic Libro of Uguccione of Lodi, are
placed among the oldest poetic documents of the Italian
dialects; but it was employed by Fra Giacomino of Ve-
rona, a Franciscan, in two short poems which describe,
with coarse naivete, the pains of hell and the joys of
paradise, and by Bonvesin of Riva, a well-to-do Milanese,
indifferently educated, and enrolled in the third order
of the Umigliati (an order for laymen) in contrasti, leg-
ends and moral discourses, of which he wrote, during
the last decades of the thirteenth century, a respectable
number.

This dialectal poetry of Upper Italy, although desti-
tute of artistic value, is worthy of note for the antiquity
of some of its compositions and for the vivid reflections
in them of the parenetic or expository ballads of the
jongleurs. The poems already mentioned, as well as an-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 21

other by Pietro da Barsegape, a Milanese noble of the
second half of the thirteenth century, and certain para-
phrases of prayers (among them a Decalogo and a Salve
Regina of 1253 in the Bergamese dialect) were intended
by their authors, all monks or men sincerely devout, to
supplant among the people the frivolous narratives and
scurrilous discourses of the jongleurs. But, although
they opposed the latter, they imitated them; so that
these authors themselves became a sort of religious
jongleurs, skilful in reciting, and often also in clothing
with musical notes the verses of others and their own.
In a word, it was not unusual, in the thirteenth century,
to see profane jongleurs and "jongleurs of God" amusing
and instructing the people in the same public squares;
so that it was very natural that both should avail them-
selves of kindred sounds and kindred forms. For, as we
know, that populace had its own songs, with which, es-
pecially in spring, it was wont to guide the dances of
women and youths (carok or tresche) in an open or en-
closed space on verdant meadows under the clear sky.
The profane jongleurs made these ballads their own, or
else, omitting the chorus, changed them, sometimes into
a detto, sometimes into a serventese; the jongleurs of God,
while preserving them metrically intact, delved in them
for laudi in honor of Christ, the Virgin, or this or that
saint. Of this character was a baUata, which has not
come down to us, composed in 1255 by a jongleur of Pis-
toia, named Guidaloste, and paid for by the Commune
of Siena, to celebrate the capture of the castle of Tor-
niella. But only fragments of the songs made in this
fashion have been preserved, among which the oldest is
part of a cantilena in the Bergamese dialect of 1193, and
the most noteworthy is a lament of the women of Mes-
sina (1282). Quite different are the historical rhymes,
written between the end of the thirteenth century and
the beginning of the fourteenth by an anonymous author,

22 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

in the dialect of Genoa: a real poetical diary, with an
intermixture of legends, proverbs, moral observations
and prayers. But the popular sacred lyric is much more
important, and not destitute of a certain artistic value.

The cradle of this lyric was Umbria, the center of the
Franciscan movement, where the work of the Serafico of
Assisi had been most efficacious. The Cantico del Sole
or Cantico dclle Creature, attributed to St. Francis (d.
1226), in which the Supreme Artificer is praised in his
creatures, the sweet name of brother or sister being
given to each, is a prose "in numbers," with frequent
rhymes and assonants, on the type of the Latin se-
quences of the Church. To these sequences (which in
the liturgy take also the name of lands, on account of
their contents) are united, precisely because of their con-
tents, the lauds, or sacred songs in the vernacular, first
used (at least, in the form in which we have them) by
the confraternity of the Flagellants or Disciplinati ; songs
which, metrically, are ballate. The companies that used
them sprang into existence in 1258 among the populace
of Umbria, which had been stirred up by the voice of
an old hermit who exhorted them to do penance; and,
perhaps, at that time, the rude cantilcne, which were ex-
pressive of the compunction and religious enthusiasm
of the crowds, and which the Flagellants intoned for
their benefit, were confided to writing. Certainly, every
confraternity formed for itself its own poetic patrimony.
Very soon the Flagellants, excited to frenzy by their
flagellations, wandered beyond the confines of Umbria,
scatterings their lauds everywhere, especially in Tuscany,
where, about the end of the thirteenth century, we find
them in great repute at Cortona and Borgo San Sepol-
cro; and there was one far-famed singer of lauds, too,
Jacopone of Todi.

Ser Jacopo Benedetti (1230? — 1306) was leading a gay
and bustling life in his native Todi, when the sudden

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 23

death of his wife at a marriage feast, and the discovery
of a hair shirt beneath her rich clothing, so agitated
his conscience, and, to some extent, his brain, as to lead
him not only to despise the world, but to conduct him-
self often like a man out of his mind. This sacred mad-
ness made him the best of the jongleurs of God to whom
we have already alluded. His lauds, composed in the
Umbrian dialect and in the form of the popular ballate,
were smooth, spirited and rhythmical, and when sung
to the crowds — which may have repeated the refrain be-
tween strophe and strophe in chorus — at one time moved
those who heard them to tears ; at another, thrilled them
with terror; now childishly simple, now roughly jocular,
but ever inflamed with a "fire of love" for heavenly
things, which sometimes took on material or sensuous
appearances. But the artisans and peasants of Umbria
were enthusiastic about the strange hermit, their own
Jacopone, so humble with the humble, so proud and
frank with the powerful. Besides his ascetic poems, he
has left us some very vigorous satires against Celestino
V and Bonifazio VIII: against the former, because he
proved incapable of giving effect to the ideal of the
Franciscan poverelli, among whom Jacopone, after ten
years' penance, had been enrolled as a simple tertiary;
against the latter, because he was a persecutor of Celes-
tine, of the poverelli, and of the poet himself. Nor did
he engage in war with Pope Bonifazio in words only;
he conspired with the Colonna faction to force him to
abdicate. But he was taken prisoner, confined in chains
in a subterranean dungeon, and was not released until
that Pontiff's death.

The poems of Jacopone have reached us intermingled
with those of his companions and followers. In the edi-
tions we possess there are, in addition to the lyrical
lauds, some true and characteristic dialogues or contrast!.
The sacred ballate or lands of the confraternity of Disci-

24 FRANCESCO JFLAMINl

plinati often assumed a representative form, doubtless
from some unconscious recollections of the histrionic
contrasti on profane subjects. Their matter was taken
directly from the texts of the liturgy: the Latin litur-
gical dramas furnished both the stimulus and the model
of these dramatic lauds. The Church, at first sternly op-
posed to stage plays, had, later, welcomed them to her
embraces. On solemn festivals, an element was added to
the symbolic representation of the Passion, which takes
place at mass, and became an integral part of divine ser-
vice ; this element, subsequently developed and amplified,
finally drew away from the latter and departed from
the temple. As early as 1244, the Passion was performed
at Padua in the Prato del Valle. In imitation of these
spectacles, the laud singers of Umbria and of the Abruz-
zo, on the recurrence of the sacred festivals, represented,
with a very simple scenic apparatus, at a spot between
the walls of the church and the oratory of their confra-
ternity, scenes appropriate to the festival that was
being celebrated. They paraphrased, for the most part,
the words of the Bible; but we also meet in their dia-
logistic lauds realistic traits that are the germs of ulterior
developments, as was shown later in the Devozioni del
giovedi e del venerdi Santo, written in the first half of the
fourteenth century, in which the expression of the af-
fections is marked by greater force, and the Biblical mat-
ter treated with greater freedom; the ottava rima appears
in this work in its full perfection.

One species of poetry that was frankly plebeian and
yet was by no means of popular origin, owed its exist-
ence to certain witty and eccentric rhymes of the thir-
teenth century. Gerardo Patecchio (Pateg) of Cremona,
a rather gay notary of the first half of the period, be-
sides a string of moral precepts, has left in the Noie, akin
to the emtegs of the Provencals, a curious enumeration
of unpleasant things to be shunned, which will be imi-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 25

tated later by Pucci. Besides the Note, he wrote another
poem on the Piaccri. Both the pains and pleasures were
reviewed — not with the view of conveying instruction
sportively, but with satiric intent — by Folgore da San
Gemignano and Cene dalla Chitarra. The former in his
youth sang wittily in twelve sonnets the jovial occupa-
tions which should, in his opinion, be followed during
the several months of the year by a merry company of
Siena, which, it appears, was the spendthrift crew men-
tioned by Dante (Inferno, XXIX, 130), and in seven
others, written for a friend, the delights peculiar to each
day of the week; the latter, in direct opposition to the
pleasures of Folgore's "crown of the months," describes
in the same number of sonnets their vexations and irri-
tating miseries, and parodies the verses of his opponent.
The lives of these two versifiers stretched into the four-
teenth century. Rustico di Filippo and Forese Donati,
both Florentines, did not live beyond the thirteenth. Rus-
tico, to whom Brunetto Latini addressed a poetical let-
ter (the Favoldlo), composed burlesque sonnets which
represent naturally and vigorously the small troubles of
daily life; Forese, brother of Messer Corso and Picardia
Donati, engaged in a rhyming contest with Dante, his
intimate friend (Purgatorio, XXIII, 48 et seq.)> in which
he banters him playfully. But among all the burlesquers
of the period, Cecco Angioleri of Siena is preeminent.
He flourished in the second half of the thirteenth cen-
tury, and carried on also a poetical correspondence (not
always friendly, by any means) with Dante. In num-
erous and really original sonnets, he sang, with a natur-
alness and a characteristic humor that give him a stamp
of modernity, his amorous misadventures, his poverty
and his quarrels with his father, a wealthy man, as mis-
erly as he himself was wasteful for the sake of "woman,
wine and dice." Laughter and weeping alternate in

26 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

these rhymes, and the soul of the poet is laid bare with
singular crudity and sincerity.

The imitators of the Provengal troubadours, whom we
have already mentioned, by merely copying a literature,
at this time in its decadence, and, at its best, noted for
subtlety and artifice, could give to Italy only wretched
lyrics. Even in Tuscany their experiments were the re-
verse of successful. Guittone d'Arezzo, (d. 1294), one of
the Jolly Friars (Frati godenti) of the military order of
the Cavalieri di Santa Maria Gloriosa, wrote amorous
and moral poems full of Latinisms and conceits bor-
rowed from the troubadours ; yet he was much admired,
and created a school ; nor could it be otherwise in an age
which bestowed on the nebulous Arnaud Daniel the chief
honors of the Provengal Parnassus. The chiuso parlare
or dittato forte, by confusing the judgment, served as a
convenient cloak to hide the emptiness of the matter,
Guittone may have in art his own special physiognomy,
but its lineaments are harsh and angular. His followers,
the Pisans (Bacciarone, Pannuccio, Pucciandone Mar-
telli, etc.) carried his faults to monstrous excesses by
their fondness for accumulating interior rhymes, and in-
versions or hyperlatons, after the Latin fashion.

The Italian amorous lyric was first liberated from
the conventionalism of the Provengal imitators in learned
Bologna, where Guinizelli gave a philosophical turn to
Italian poetry, and spread abroad the new doctrine of
love, for which he is highly admired by Dante. Guido
Guinizelli de' Principi, a doctor and podesta of Castel-
franco in 1270, after beginning as a follower of Guittone,
initiated, probably influenced by the ascendancy of the
studies of eloquence and philosophy, which were culti-
vated in. the Bolognese schools in union with jurispru-
dence, a new style of poetry which was essentially di-
dactic, and was profound and subtle in conception, and
graceful in form. Thus our native tradition, the legacy

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 27

of a glorious past, began finally to work upon the new
literature in the vernacular also, as well as on the lyric
of art, hitherto shackled by foreign imitation; and then,
too, began that dolce style, of which Guinizelli was hailed
by Dante with filial reverence as the master, but which
was speedily transplanted from the austere city of scho-
liasts to more congenial soil. The author of the famous
canzone, Al corgcntile ripara scmpre Amore, did not
make disciples in his native Bologna; but the poetical
school which aimed at the sincere expression of feeling,
the true mission of the lyric, while continuing to repro-
duce some of the poetic measures of the Provencals,
flourished at the close of the thirteenth century in Flor-
ence, as a natural and almost necessary product of the
civil and intellectual condition of this city.

Florence, the home of courtesy, good breeding and
chivalry, made welcome whatever could be adapted to
the needs of a free people. The high standard of its
civic virtues did not interfere with its lighthearted pro-
pensity for festivals and tournaments, at which the verses
declaimed on such occasions by rhymesters like Ciacco
delF Anguillaia and Compagnetto da Prato were more
noteworthy for plebeian arrogance than for the refine-
ment of courtly poetry ; Chiaro Davanzati, who is known
to have fought at Montaperti (1260), has seldom shown,
in his numerous songs, any affinity with the new poetry,
either. Nevertheless, the bdla scola, to which Dante be-
longed, and which, because of the expression he uses in
opposing it to the preceding school of Jacopo da Lentini,
Guitton d'Arezzo and Bonagiunta da Lucca (Purgatorio,
XXIV, 57) is usually called the dolce stile twvo, sprang
up in Florence, perhaps independently of the design and
authority of this or that poet, the result, apparently, of
a simultaneous and spontaneous concurrence of various
intellects in the same artistic ideal. Composed by poets
of the White party, who were, however, more or less

28 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

moderately democratic, it gathered the humble ballata
from the mouths of the people, and elevated it to the
dignity of a form of art which was always distinguished
for exquisite grace. Thus the dominant city of Tuscany,
which, in the latter decades of the thirteenth century,
had succeeded in offering the most perfect example of
popular government, was able to give to Italy the lyric
of the new art (art, not manner, as in the case of the
Sicilians and the followers of Guittone), the chief char-
acteristic of which is the variety of the forms; that is,
liberty in art indissolubly united with liberty in civil
life.

And, indeed, each of the poets of the dolce stile, all of
whom are agreed in making the inspiration of Love the
controlling force of their poetry, is marked by a very
powerful impress of individuality. In the verses of Lapo
Gianni (of the Ricevreti family), a Florentine notary of
the latter part of the thirteenth century and the early
part of the fourteenth, there is a peculiar vigor both of
language and imagery; in Dino Frescobaldi, a fellow-
citizen and contemporary of Lapo, the expression of grief
is most vivid and effective; Cino da Pistoia, known also
by the name of de' Sinibuldi or Sigisbuldi, a famous
jurist, sometimes exhibits the bitter and cruel voluptuous-
ness of sorrow which constrains some minds to yearn
for the horrible. But all three poets aim at sweetness and
subtlety: sweetness of words, subtlety of thought; the
most conspicuous characteristic of all of them is a mystic
ideality. Love with them is often confounded with the
sentiment of Christian charity; the lady, represented as
an instrument of salvation, seems to reflect, in her ap-
pearance, her smile, and the ineffable gentleness of her
movements, a ray of heavenly light. Hence the umilta,
unceasingly extolled in their ladies by these rhymes, and
this humbleness is nothing else but the serene internal
peacefulness that shines through the countenance ; hence

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 29

the repetition in their poems of forms and motifs, which
gives rise to a conventionalism different from that of
the Provencal imitators, but not the less manifest on
that account : the pale color, the beneficent effects of the
presence of the beloved object, the tremors which the
mere sight of her causes in the poet, the speaking and
working spirits. It is natural, then, the lady being en-
veloped in that veil of ideality, that the poet should ap-
proach her timidly, and that she should purify the poet,
giving him strength and guidance on the path of vir-
tue by means of a smile or a glance. As to the spirits,
whole tribes of which find hospitality in the rhymes of
these poets, the conception that the modes and prin-
ciples of life had their source in a subtle fluid was taken
from the teachings of the Aristotelians and Thomists.

But, however tiresome this new mythology of personi-
fications of the psychic faculties may seem, it aided won-
derfully the poets of the new art in reproducing and un-
folding the most trivial adventures, the most fugitive
contingencies of love. On the other hand, the candor,
the grace, the profound intimacy of feeling, which il-
lumined their measures, force us to pass over what is un-
real and artificial. Above all, it is pleasant in these
poems to see the pensive and modest maiden supplanting
the dame, the chatelaine, who is always posturing, grave-
ly or gallantly, in the canzone of the troubadours. And
images of singular force are to be found, in Cavalcanti
especially, a genuine lyrist, and often so close to Dante
as to be almost confounded with him. Guido Cavalcanti
(i25Q?-i3oo), one of the leaders of the Whites, was al-
ready a famous trovatore when our greatest poet composed
his first sonnet : being the older man, he had adopted the
new art some time before Alighieri, who addresses his
juvenile productions to him in words of affection and
deference. As Dante, then, was neither his precursor
nor his master, he possessed in Guido a brother in art,

30 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

simply a little more advanced in years than himself. A
scornful and somewhat incredulous poet-philosopher,
Cavalcanti continued the Guinizelli tradition ; but he was,
as "spokesman of love in vulgar speech," aesthetically
superior to the Bolognese.

"One Guido from another Guido wrested

The glory of our tongue." — Purgatorio, XI, 97-8.

One of his canzoni on the origin and nature of the
amorous sentiment was regarded as the purest example
of poetic diction in contemporary poetry, and, for a long
time, was the source of many commentaries. We mod-
erns prefer the sonnets (two of which, like some of
Guinizelli's, are parodies), and the fresh and vigorous
ballate, the inspiration of which is sometimes drawn from
the pleasing and elegant trans-Alpine pastorelle. The
poem, so sad and despairing, which he wrote in sickness,
far from his Tuscany (Perch' i' non spero di tornar giammai)
is one of the sweetest and loveliest things in all our lyric
poetry.

Dante, who fixed the principal canon of the new poetry
and gave it its most perfect models, also quickly raised,
as we shall presently see, the vernacular prose to a note-
worthy height. Poor, indeed, had it been before him!
Although used in writings on domestic subjects, like cer-
tain Ricordi of the Sienese Mattasala di Spinello de' Lam-
bertini, which begin in 1231, its first experiments, with
a literary purpose, were made in the epistles of Guittone
d'Arezzo; the work is a strange and artificial imitation,
in its long periods and in its style, of the scholastic and
law-Latin which the Artcs dictandi was at the time teach-
ing, with a parade of precepts and examples. But the
Latin language still continued to be regarded as the most
suitable instrument for narrative and didactic matter.
By its side French, as the most universal and "delectable"
of the Romance tongues, was employed equally in his-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 31

tories and in treatises; and, in addition to Rusticiano of
Pisa, who has been already mentioned, Aldobrando, a
native of Florence or Siena, wrote in French, in 1256,
the Regime du corps, Martino da Canale the Chronique
des Vcnicicns, between 1257 and 1275, and the Florentine,
Brunette Latini Li livres don Tresor, about 1265. Latini
(i2io?-i2Q4), a notary and a busy citizen of the Guelph
party, was highly esteemed by his contemporaries as "a
great philosopher and a supreme master of rhetoric." In
the Tresor ("Treasure") he has built up one of those vast
encyclopaedic compilations which in the Middle Ages
served to spread a knowledge of science among those who
were unable to have many costly books at hand. The
work was written in France, in the langue d'o'il, and was
widely popular on the other side of the Alps. It was trans-
lated into Italian, almost as soon as it appeared, by Bono
Giamboni, and the last part, which teaches rhetoric, on
the lines of the De inventionc of Cicero, and politics, ac-
companied by explanations partly original and full of
practical sense, must surely have contributed "to civilize
the Florentines, to render them conversant with good
language and to make them knowing in the ways of
guiding and governing the Republic," which is the chief
eulogy conferred on Brunette by Vilani.

Original works in Latin and French were very soon fol-
lowed by translations, which were now and then travesties,
from both languages ; some orations of Cicero were trans-
lated by Ser Brunette himself; Italian versions of Vege-
tius and Paulus Orosius were made by Giamboni, a Flor-
entine judge, in the second half of the thirteenth century;
Fra Guidotto of Bologna epitomized, in his native dia-
lect, between 1254 and 1266, the Rhetorica ad Hcrcnniwn,
with the title of Fiore di rctorica, and this little work,
being found useful by those who were obliged by their
official duties to speak in public, was revised by a Tus-
can (perhaps Giamboni himself) and afterward by others*

32 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Several works in low, recent, or contemporary Latin
were also translated into the vernacular: the so-called
Book of Cato, a collection of maxims attributed to Cato
and adopted as a school book; the Elegia of Arrigo da
Settimello; the moral dissertations composed by Alber-
tano, a judge of Brescia, between 1238 and 1248; and
the Deregimine principum of the famous Roman, Egidius,
translated in 1288 from a French version of the Latin
original. In the more elegant circles, French romances
of arms and love were read chiefly, either in the orig-
inal or in Italian translations. We possess two of these,
treating of the adventures of Tristan, which are im-
portant. An anonymous writer abridged in the Conti
d'antichi cavalieri a longer heroic narrative in the Langue
d'o'il; another extracted an Istorictta troiana from the ro-
mance of Benoit de Sainte More ; the Fatti di Cesare were
taken from a purely French text. On the other hand,
people of little cultivation were perfectly satisfied with
such humble monastic legends as the Dodici conti morali,
a version in Italian prose of the same number of tales
(fabliaux) applied to a moral purpose, and the Fieri (or
Fioretti), which narrated, often with childish simplicity,
the words and deeds of famous persons.

Like the prose of the Fiori is that of the Novellino,
the oldest collection of Italian stories. It contains a hun-
dred narratives, for the most part brief and rather un-
substantial; they have a great variety of plots, and were
derived from many different sources, namely: the Bible,
the French romances or fabliaux, the Provengal biogra-
phies of the troubadours, oriental legends, and classical
traditions strangely distorted in certain books of the
Middle Ages; also from chronicles, and, finally, the
tales current among the people of Florence, to which city
the anonymous author, who lived in the latter part of
the thirteenth century and the early part of the four-
teenth, belonged. The style of the little work is simple

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 33

and concise, but disconnected; it was revised, and new
stories were added to it a little later. Nor are our first
original prose writings on didactic and historical sub-
jects, though different in form, of much value. The
most noticeable are: the treatise Delia composiziom del
monde ("Compositions of the world") written in 1282
by Ristoro of Arezzo in his native dialect; the Fiorc di
virtu ("Flowers of Virtue") of Tommaso Gozzadini the
Bolognese (second half of the thirteenth century), a lit-
tle book of maxims and moral examples, which, when
revised and turned into Tuscan in the succeeding cen-
tury, became popular; a little chronicle of Pisa, also one
of Lucca, and a third one of Florence, the latter er-
roneously attributed to Ser Brunette; likewise La bat-
taglia di Montaperti, told by an anonymous writer of Siena.
Fra Salimbene of Parma, the true historian of the thir-
teenth century, wrote, not in the vernacular, but in
Latin. He is the author of a chronicle which is entirely
made up of anecdotes, digressions and curious incidents.
His Latin, however, has already the lineaments of the
new idiom, which was later used in the trecento for
narrative and scientific prose, with versions from the
mother tongue and from the French. Especially note-
worthy among the former is the treatise on agriculture
by Pier de' Crescenzi, and among the latter the Milione
of Marco Polo, written by Rusticiano of Pisa in French
in 1298, and afterward turned into Italian by others. To
the thirteenth century also belongs the Introduzione alle
virtu, attributed to Giamboni; it is written with simplic-
ity of style in the pure Florentine speech, and in the form
of an allegorical journey with symbolical personifica-
tions; among them, Philosophy, the guide and mistress
of the poet.

This form and this speech, about the same time, served
Dante Alighieri for the Commcdia.

34 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

CHAPTER II
THE GREAT TUSCANS OF THE TRECENTO

^•MT HE persistent intensity of the struggles between
1 m warring passions and ideas in the old Florentine
^^^y Commune, which every year renewed its youth
on the first of May amid dances, music and
shouts of rejoicing, is a highly interesting spectacle. The
robust intellects of the city were trained from boyhood
to think and to act ; within its walls reverberated the great
disputes that were dividing the Christian world. Only
a people schooled in this fashion could have produced
a work like the Commedia of Dante, which while mirror-
ing its fruitful and stormy life in a supernal ideal, at the
same time welcomed all the formative principles of me-
diaeval civilization: only from a city like Florence, free,
and so prolific of elect minds that this fecundity seemed
almost a quality of the soil, could have issued the master-
piece by which the Italian language, which had been
lisping verses laboriously shaped by a foreign chisel,
was placed, suddenly and in full maturity, among the
most cultivated European tongues. But, if Florence de-
served such glory, it must not be forgotten that fortune
was singularly gracious to her. For Dante was one of
those geniuses who appear in the world only after in-
tervals of centuries, and whom nature creates, as if from
a passing caprice, to test the limit of her power, shatter-
ing the mould immediately afterward.

Dante Alighieri, son of Alighieri and of Donna Bella,
of an unknown house, was born in Florence in May,
1265. His family, though ancient and certainly noble,
does not appear among the chiefs of the Guelph party, to
which it belonged, owing to the fact that it was not

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 35

wealthy and had few adherents. His father, by keeping
aloof from the adventures of his faction, had managed
to live quietly in his native city in the midst of political
turmoils. Dante, self-taught, for the most part, learned
"by himself the art of uttering words in rhyme :" among
Latin classic authors Virgil, whom he had made the ob-
ject of "long study," especially inspired him with poetic
thought and sentiment. His intimacy with Brunette,
Latini also contributed to form his intellect; Brunetto,
although he never was his tutor, deserved the tribute of
affection and gratitude paid him in Canto XV of the
Inferno for the counsels he proffered the young poet.
The friendship of such men as Guido Cavalcanti, Cino
da Pistoia, Giotto, and the musician Casella, must have
likewise exercised a benign influence on the character
and spirit of Alighieri in the second and third decades
of his life. On the other hand, his literary work would
seem to have been little, or not at all, affected by his
military services to the Commune, for which he fought,
in 1289, at Campaldino and at the siege and capture of
the castle of Caprona. It is not until 1295 that we be-
gin to learn of the part, not at all exceptional, which he
took in public life, after he had been enrolled in the art,
or guild, of doctors and apothecaries. In this and the
two following years he was an active member of the
public Councils, and in May, 1300, he was sent as am-
bassador to San Gemignano. In the same year, he was
one of the Priori from June 15 to August 15, and aroused
many hatreds, which bore fruit not long after, by his op-
position to the designs of Boniface VIII. He continued
his resistance to the Pontiff in several Councils in 1301,
in which year he was charged with the duty of supervis-
ing the work of straightening the Via di San Procolo.
He belonged for six months to the Council of the Hun-
dred, and may, possibly, have also been for a time am-
bassador at Rome. But the Whites, (Bianchi) or mode-

36 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

rate Guelph party, were overthrown by the Blacks (Neri),
after Boniface VIII had commissioned Charles of Valois
to enter Florence with the title of peace-maker (piacere),
but, in reality, in order to crush the Bianchi (November
i, 1301), and Dante, who was a partisan of the latter,
was, with others, condemned for contumacy, on January
27, 1302, by a decree of the Podesta, Cante de' Gabrielli
of Gubbio, to a fine of 5,000 fiorini piccoli, banishment
from Tuscany for two years, and perpetual exclusion
form every office and dignity, as guilty, according to public
report, of peculation, extortion and plots against the Pope,
Charles of Valois, and the Guelph party. As Alighieri
neither paid the fine nor put in an appearance, he was
by another decree, of March 12, sentenced to perpetual
exile and to be burned alive, should he ever fall into
the hands of the Commune. So he was forced to abandon
country and family, nor is it probable that he ever saw
again his wife, Gemma di Manetto Donati, to whom he
had been married for several years. They had two sons,
Pietro and Jacopo, and two daughters, Antonia and Bea-
trice; the latter ended her days as a nun in Ravenna.
Henceforward the great poet was to be a homeless wan-
derer through Italy, "a pilgrim," (as he says in the Con-
irivio, i, 3), "almost a mendicant, exhibiting, against his
will, the wound inflicted by fortune, which is often im-
puted as a fault to him who has suffered the wound."

In the first period of his exile Alighieri kept close to
his companions in misfortune, who, aided by the Ghibel-
lines, were making preparations at Forli and other places
to reinstate themselves by force, and, at San Godenzonel
Mugello, he was even compelled, like the others, to com-
pensate Ugolino degli Ubaldini for his losses in fighting
against Florence (June 8, 1302). But, quickly disgusted
vrith the "wicked and foolish company," he separated
from his confederates, and afterward formed "a party
consisting of himself," (Paradisot XVII, 62 and 69). His

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 37

"first refuge and first hostelry" he found at the court
of Bartolommeo della Scala in Verona (1303?); in 1306,
he was, perhaps, at Padua, and, certainly, at Lunigiana,
where he was commissioned by the Marquesses Frances-
chino, Moroello and Corradino Malespina to conclude
peace with Antonio, Bishop of Luni, and where he re-
ceived from this house the courteous hospitality which
he gratefully praises in Canto VIII of the Purgatorio.
The road traveled by the glorious exile afterward dur-
ing the wanderings in which it was his lot to prove:

"How salt the taste of others' bread, how hard
The going up and down of others' stairs."

—Pcaradiso, XVII, 53,

is very uncertain. He would seem to have been in
Casentino in 1307, and to have subsequently visited
Paris (about 1310), where he devoted his time to the
theological studies then flourishing in its celebrated uni-
versity. When, in the month of October of the same
year, the German Emperor, Henry VII, descended into
Italy to restore the rights of the Holy Roman Empire
and establish order in the peninsula, hope again sprang
to life in the heart of the exile ; for in the representative
of legitimate power, of that universal monarchy neces-
sary for the salvation of the human race, Dante saw the
redeemer of Italy, ordained of God to repair every in-
justice, and he trusted to be able to return to his Flor-
ence by honorable ways and methods. He visited him,
and wrote, with unflinching faith in his own political
maxims and burning hate for the "scelleratissimi," op-
posing, as they did, that which for him was truth and
goodness, three Latin epistles: in the first of which he
summons the princes and peoples of Italy, exultantly, to
bow reverently before the glorious successor of the
Caesars (1310) ; in the second, he bitterly reproaches the
Florentines, who were getting ready to resist him,

38 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

prophesying their destruction (March 31, 1311); and in
the third, directed to the Emperor himself, he urges him
to storm Florence, which was the real lair of the rebels
against his authority, and not Cremona or the other Lom-
bard cities he was wasting his time in trying to reduce
(April 16, 1311).

These fresh acts of hostility toward the ruling party
in Florence caused Alighieri to be placed among those
excepted from the so-called Riforma of Baldo d'Agu-
glione, by which several exiles were recalled from banish-
ment on September 2, 1311. Henry VII at last marched
into Central Italy and received the imperial crown in
Rome; but though he spent over a month in besieging
Florence, he failed, and died suddenly at Buonconvento,
while he was making preparations to attack Robert of
Anjou, King of Naples, (August 24, 1313). Dante, who
had written the last two epistles, already mentioned,
"from the sources of the Arno," being probably at the
time the guest of Count Guido Novello di Battifolle irr
Poppi, seems, after the ruin of his great hopes, to have
retired into solitude, passing from the convent of Santa
Croce di Fonte Avellana to that of Gubbio. Certainly,
to this period (1314) belongs an epistle, addressed to the
Italian cardinals, assembled in conclave at Carpentras,
after the death of Clement V, in which he exhorts them,
in fierce language, to elect a pope of their own nation.
He is supposed to have dwelt in Lucca, of which Uguc-
cione della Faggiola was the ruler, between 1314 and
1316. After the defeat which the latter inflicted on the
Guelphs of Florence and other cities at Montecatini (Au-
gust 29, 1315), Ranieri d'Orvieto, King Robert's vicar
in Florence, renewed, on November 6, the sentence passed
on Alighieri, his sons and others: should they fall into
the power of the Commune, they were to be beheaded
as Ghibellines and rebels. Nor could the poet take ad-
vantage of the amnesty which the Florentines, the year

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 39

after, feeling reassured, granted to a large number of
exiles, on condition that they made an offering of them-
selves to St. John the Baptist as common malefactors;
for all the exiles of 1301 were perpetually excluded from
this amnesty, and from every other, by a decree of June
2, 1316: the letter upon which the notion is based that
Dante refused to accept permission to return to Florence
because of the humiliating conditions attached to it, ap-
pears to be apocryphal.

In his last years Alighieri was especially absorbed in
the great work in which "both earth and heaven have
had a hand," and unfolded the marvelous force of his
genius in. the masterpiece which will make his name
eternal. He still had hopes of returning to his country
and receiving "at the font of his baptism" that poet's
crown which he refused to accept from Bologna. The
Commedia, which posterity was to deem and call divine,
had to triumph over the party hatred with which his fel-
low-citizens pursued him implacably. However, he re-
tired within himself, and tranquil and artistic Ravenna
was, after 1317, his last refuge. Although he was also
the guest, about that time, of Cangrande della Scala,
Lord of Verona and Chief of the Ghibellines in Lom-
bardy, there is no doubt that he spent the entire last
years of his life at the Court of Ravenna, with his noble
friend and protector, Guido Novello da Polenta, nephew
of the Francesca da Rimini sung of in the Commedia.
He died after his return from an embassy to Venice,
upon which he had been sent by Guido, on September
13 or 14, in the year 1321. His bones, discovered in
1865, when reunited Italy celebrated the sixth centenary
of the birth of her greatest poet, repose in the city which
received the last sigh of the harassed exile.

In his youth the love, and, throughout all his life, the
sweet memory of Beatrice, were inexhaustible points of
poetic inspiration for Alighieri. The historical reality

40 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

of Beatrice has been doubted by many in the past, one
finding in her the symbol of one quality, another of some
other. At one time it looked as if the opinion of Adolfo
Bartoli would prevail among critics, according to which
the "donna angelicata" of Dante and other poets of the
dolce stile novo "did not correspond to any objective reality,
but was an abstract, impalpable type, which became con-
crete, fugitively, in this or that young girl's face, to
separate from it afterward and melt away into more
aerial forms." To-day a larger number of critics hold
the opposite opinion. We believe that Alighieri and his
brethren in art, saturated as they were with mysticism,
even dazed a little by visions of the celestial bliss of
their dreams and yearnings, were quite naturally led to
perceive plainly a nimbus around the brows of the liv-
ing, breathing woman they were wooing, and shining
wings on her shoulders. Hence the ideality which en-
circles Beatrice, without at all affecting the very real,
profound and intimate affection with which she had in-
spired the poet. In a word, the latter undoubtedly loved
a young Florentine girl of that name; and it is very
probable that she was the daughter of Folco Portinari,
a rich and generous citizen, that she was married to Si-
mone de' Bardi, and that she died in 1290, when only
twenty-four years old. This is deduced from Boccaccio's
Vita di Dante and from a more complete redaction of the
commentary of Pietro Alighieri on the poem of his father.
The fact of her having had a husband is not important,
considering the transparent purity of Dante's affection
for her and the conception of love entertained by the
poets of the thirteenth century.

The vicissitudes of this love were expounded in 1295,
or a little before, in the Vita nova (so entitled, accord-
ing to every probability, in order to denote the "vita gio-
venile"), which begins at his first meeting with Beatrice
in her childhood, and ends when the idea of the Commedia

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 41

rises in his mind. It is a little book in which the flower
of the verses composed by Dante for his lady is har-
vested, intermingled with explanations in prose, or
ragioni (as they are termed by the author, the razos of
Provence), by which the whole is combined into a full
and well-ordered narrative. Both prose and verse are ad-
justed to one single conception, gradually developed, and
forming the preparation for that apotheosis, or rather
transformation into the loftiest symbol, of the beloved
lady, which will be the substantial part of the allegory
of the Commedia. In fact, Dante, while he has left us
passionately sensuous verses addressed to a woman
whose name he hides under that of Pietra, never, in the
poems devoted to the exaltation of Beatrice, expresses
other sentiments than those of stainless purity. For
many years he had been content with a passing greeting
from his "most gentle one." This being denied him, he
had to be satisfied with praising her ; and, beginning with
the canzone, "Ladies, who know full well the lore of
love" (Donne, ch'az-ete intclletto d'amorc) he "drew out"
that "matter nobler than the past," thus initiating some-
thing new in connection with his own art as well as with
that of others, who, as we have seen, made poems, in
his own time and in his own city, founded on principles
not dissimilar from his. In this 'canzone is the first
thought of the spiritualized Beatrice of the Commedia;
after it there are no longer in the Vita nova* longings
for a Salutation, hopes of requited love, relations of any
kind whatsoever between the poet and his lady ; but only
her unceasing and fervent glorification. She is "an em-
bodied angel," an image of perfection, by which alone
"beauty is tested," sent by God among men "to show a
miracle." Therefore, the divine intelligences desire her
in heaven, where, after her return, she will become a

* Nora is the form of the word in old Italian. The later form
is nuova.

42 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

"great spiritual beauty ;" such is precisely the manner in
which we see her represented in the last part of this
little work.

The mystical idealism, which, as we have seen already,
encircled the beloved object in the eyes of the poet's Tus-
can contemporaries of the thirteenth century, is no longer
in Dante, after he has laid his hand on that "new and
loftier matter," merely a luminous veil enwrapping the
sweet and lithe person that gives rise to sighs and
dreams; but is intimately blended with the essence it-
self of the sacred mystical being, whose very glance dif-
fuses around an ineffable ardor of love. And every-
thing in the Vita nova is arranged in harmony with this
ideal: inventions, poetic fantasies, language, style. From
the first appearance of the celestial child, the "spirits"
of Dante, having assumed voice and person, speak the
Latin of the Sacred Scriptures. The marvelous synchron-
ism of the number nine — which, as three is its root, sym-
bolizes the miracle of which the Trinity is the source
— in all the contingencies of the short life of the lady
and of the love of the poet, borders on the mysterious;
not without mystery, either, are the "gentle ones" who
accompany her, or (like Giovanna, the beloved of Caval-
canti) go before her; and not without mysterious mean-
ing and deep and sacred significance is the vision which
appears to the poet of the approaching death of Bea-
trice (Chap. 23), attended as it is by extraordinary and
unusual indications of the agitation it caused, not only
in men, but in nature. Everything conspires to fore-
shadow in the lady, already beginning to put off mortal-
ity in the Vita nova, the exalted symbol she is to repre-
sent in the Commedia; the juvenile production of Dante
is virtually, at bottom, simply the praise (la loda) of the
internal, incorruptible beauty of Beatrice, made through
the medium of a narrative, which is irradiated with the
tenderest light of poetry, of the various ways in which

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 43

the poet was virtuously affected; first by the courtesy
she showed him, then by the mere sight of her, and lastly
by the blessed memory of her. It is probable that the
vision recorded at the close of the Vita nova is the very
"vision" (all the rest of the poem is a viaggio fantastico)
which, thanks to the contemplative St. Bernard, Dante
has in the Commcdia of the "celestial court," and after-
ward also of the very high place which his lady occu-
pies in it, beside "Rachel of old."

In the Vita nova, then, we have, as it were, the prelude
or preamble to the Commcdia. Put together and com-
posed while the idea of the great poem, was taking shape,
perhaps already planned, in the mind of Alighieri, the
Vita nova is subordinated to one single conception, and,
consequently, out of the Dantesque measures "spread
among the people," it has selected only those which can,
be wedded or in some manner adapted to the gradual
development of this conception. There are signs o£
adaptations in the amorous "libello." While writing it,
Dante made use of more than one poem previously com-
posed by him, giving such a poem a somewhat different
significance, or tasking his ingenuity to prove by per-
plexing subtleties that it was full of occult meanings, of
secret allusions. In the choice of the measures he has
not conformed to aesthetic standards, at least in the first
part; he has adopted those which seemed in harmony
with the matcria nova, arranged with due admixture
of reality and vision, truth and poetry, in the portion
that precedes the afore-mentioned canzone to the donne
gentili, and amply developed and expounded in the
remainder; this matter is the praise, altogether remote
from everything earthly, of the spiritual beauty of Bea-
trice. Thus, in the cleansing fires of a love in which
there was nothing carnal was dissolved or purified what-
ever was material or gross in the poetry of Alighieri's

44 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

youthful days, which had not always been inspired by the
"glorious mistress of his mind."

From all this it is clear that Dante in the lyric not
only stands apart from his fellows of the dolce stile, but
towers above them. And not all his lyric is in the Vita
nova, either; he has left us many other poems of another
inspiration, in a different key: erotic, doctrinal, alle-
gorical, even satirical and grotesque, as, for instance, the
tcnzone (poetical contest) in sonnets with Forese Donati;
nor are gems lacking in his Cansoniere which will shine
with greater effulgence when some worthless apocryphal
rhymes shall have been weeded from among them.
Nevertheless the flower of Dante's art and the quintes-
sence of his lyrical thought are contained in the little
work of his youth, especially hi its nove rime, which tell,
with such sweetness of accent and elevation of soul, the
praises of Beatrice. The sincerity and simplicity of the
artistic methods employed in them are marvelous; mar-
velous, too, is the prose which connects and elucidates
the verses, commenting on them in all their minutest de-
tails ; a prose in which the words, homogeneous with the
thoughts, gush forth — as it has been well remarked —
"spontaneous, rapid, copious, beautiful with their own
peculiar beauty, unfettered by models, either in sub-
stance or in form."

The Vita nova may be called the vestibule of that au-
gust and solemn temple, the Commedia. Beatrice was
in life an active and efficacious worker for the salvation
of Dante. Her "youthful eyes" had been the openings
through which the healing influence of the internal beauty
of the "most gentle one" had reached the timid lover:
there is another link between the little work of Ali-
ghieri's juvenile years and the masterpiece of his full ma-
turity in Chapter XI of the Vita nova which he introduced
into it solely to show what a virtuous change the greet-
ing of his lady wrought in him; that winsome move-

ment of her lips which was for Dante the goal of love
(as the eyes were its starting-point), because it had the
virtue, merely by the greeting, of regenerating the soul
in which love had been awakened, or into which it had
been infused, by the glance of the miraculous child. In
fact, Beatrice, as the instrument of salvation, Beatrice,
the handmaid of divine compassion is, as it were, the
very pivot upon which the Dantesque poem revolves.
Raised from flesh to spirit, she continues the beneficent
work of the time when, while she was yet alive and
with him, he was wont to turn his face toward the
straight ways, and the glorification of her is the thought
in which is centered the plan of the pilgrimage through
the three ultra-mundane realms. Even if we do not ad-
mit that Dante was thinking, from 1287, when he wrote
the canzone addressed to the gentle ladies, of relating a
journey of his among the lost people in which he would
speak even in hell of Beatrice, "the hope of the blessed,"
it must be admitted that, a few years after her death, he
says, in the "wonderful vision" at the close of the Vita
nova, he saw things that made him resolve not to speak
again of her, until the time should come when he could
treat of her more worthily. This "treatment," in which
he hoped "to say of her that which had never been said
of any woman," can only be the Commedia. That vision
contained the primary idea.

But the divine poem is not entirely a vision; it is an
allegorical fantasy in the form of a journey ; it brings to-
gether the full cycle of legends concerning the destiny
of man after death, which were inspired by the religious
ardor that peopled the hermitages of the Thebai'd and the
monasteries of the West. In the beginning these legends
were designed only to soften hard and ferocious natures
through the terrors of future torments, and were charac-
terized by childish ingenuousness and simple plot; but
little by little, though the ingenuousness remained, the

46 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

plot grew richer and more complex, resulting in such
stories as "The Vision of St. Paul," the legends that
came from the cloisters of distant Ireland of "The Voy-
age of St. Brendan," "The Vision of Tundalo" and the
"Purgatory" of Saint Patrick, down to the "Vision" of
Fra Alberico, a Benedictine monk of Monte Cassino, who
lived at the beginning of the twelfth century. These all
contained imaginings similar to those of Dante's poem,
— as, for example, the Lucifer of the legend of Tundalo,
who gnawed and devoured souls, and the devils of Al-
berico's vision that tried to seize the author with hooks
when he was for a moment left alone by his guide.

But into the treatment of this theme, — that is, the fu-
ture destinies of good and of evil souls, — which the peo-
ple had long loved to see pictured before them on the
walls of churches and cemeteries, represented in spec-
tacular performances and described in the songs of street
minstrels on piazzas and market-places, — Dante brought
order, symmetry, unity of conception and poetic skill;
whereas it had been before only a straggling collection
of extravagant and puerile incidents. He carried into
the realms of the infinite and the divine the considera-
tion of the things of this world, aiming, as the supreme
purpose of this "sacred poem," to save the human race
from the state of suffering and lead it to that of felicity.
So those rude monastic Odysseys were transformed into
a journey through the kingdoms of punishment, of pur-
gation and of reward, builded with the rigor of science;
and the allegorical significance, running from beginning
to end along with the literal, not only gave artistic relief
to the abstractions necessarily frequent in a poem of such
nature, but allowed Dante to introduce among the Chris-
tian imaginings the mythical personages and the topo-
graphical detail of the Avernus described by the ancients
and particularly by Virgil.

The Commedia, so called by reason of th'e matter not

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 47

always lofty and of the idiom, chosen in consequence,
not always strict and scholarly, is in its structure well
proportioned, symmetrical and, as it were, mathematical.
There are three parts, — the Inferno, the Purgatorio and
the Paradiso, each ending with the word "stars," each
having thirty-three cantos, — except that the first has one
more as an introduction, — thus one hundred cantos, in
which the number three and its multiple nine are domi-
nant; and the measure proceeds by strophes of three
lines linked one to another by the rhyme, — that is the
torza rima, where the second line of each triplet rhymes
with the first and third of the next. As to the material
and moral order of the three kingdoms that Dante vis-
ited in imagination, this is in brief the way he pictured
them:

They are arranged according to the theory explained
and described by the poet in two corresponding cantos,
the eleventh of the Inferno and the seventeenth of the
Purgatorio. In the one kingdom the damned, in the other
the souls undergoing purgation, occupy the terraced
circles of two great cones; one of these, the infernal
abyss, descends in the form of a funnel below our hemi-
sphere, touching with its point the center of the earth;
the other, diametrically opposite, the mountain of Pur-
gatory, rises toward the sky from the waters that cover
the southern hemisphere. This second cone is truncated ;
and the lofty plane that occupies its summit, the Ter-
restrial Paradise, is covered with a beautiful forest. In
the midst of it rises the tree of knowledge of good and
evil, tasting whose fruit man sinned, — this tree standing
at the antipodes of Calvary, where Christ expiated upon
the cross the sin of man. Round about the earth, center
of the universe, through the "round ether'* (Paradiso
XXII , 132) revolve the nine concentric heavens of the
Ptolemaic system, and surrounding all is the unmoving
Empyrean. In. this the souls of the just, arranged in

48 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the form of a rose, have their dwelling, appearing to
Dante in the various celestial spheres; there they enjoy
the beatific vision of the Deity surrounded by the nine
orders of the three angelic hierarchies.

The Inferno, as we have said, is an inverted cone. But
above the entrance to the "vale of the dolorous abyss,"
there is a level tract, — the "obscure campagna" — which
may be called the Ante-Inferno. On the one side of it
is the portal of the subterranean immensity, which is
in our hemisphere toward the west, at the bottom of
a horrid dark and wooded valley. On the other side the
Ante-Inferno is bounded by the Acheron, a great river
which must be crossed by all those "who die under the
wrath of God." Here are punished the pusillanimous and
especially those who, most highly favored by Heaven,
were the more guilty for failing to profit by its gifts,
that is, the angels who at the great crisis did neither
join their Creator nor oppose Him, and he "who through
cowardice made the great refusal" (Celestine V).

The first circle of the nine into which the vale of the
abyss is divided, is not filled with any that are tor-
mented; it contains the limbo, and in a "noble castle"
the wise, the good and the illustrious who died without
baptism. The damned, according as they have sinned
through excess of passion or through malice, are pun-
ished in the circles following either without or within
the city of Dis. The sins increase in gravity gradually
as we descend ; thus the passionate, who have been guilty
only of excesses, occupy the circles II to V. First among
them are those who have indulged the carnal appetites,
— that is, the sins of wantonness, gluttony, avarice and
prodigality ; then come those who have sinned by anger,
by excess of indignation, — which is a virtue, — by fury
or by rancor, — wrath swift or slow, or, as Aristotle has
it, wrath acute and wrath bitter ; they are immersed more

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 49

or less deeply in the mud of the Stygian marsh which
encloses the "red city."

The sinners through malice, that is, the truly wicked,
are distributed in three circles, VII, VIII and IX; the
first of these, subdivided in turn into three circles, con-
tains the malicious with violence; the second, divided
into ten fosses (Malebolgc), holds the malicious with
fraud, who were not trusted ; the third, divided into four,
the malicious with fraud who were trusted, — that is, the
traitors.

In the sixth circle, along the inner side of the wall
of Dis, are the heretics, — not to be confounded with the
authors of schisms, who injured others, and hence are
far down in Malebolgc. These heretics are punished
for want of faith, — "not for doing, but for not doing,"
as are the infidels of the limbo and of the castle of the
sages who occupy the first circle of the vale of the abyss.
But the heretics, much more culpable than the two other
classes in that they "would not have faith" are properly
gathered in the first circle of the city of "the perverse"
that is, those who sinned from reason, not passion.

In Dis human wickedness joined to diabolic is divided
according to the Aristotelian conception of bestiality and
of malice. The "mad bestiality" (Inferno, XI, 82-3) is
the wickedness or evil of one who madly injures another
with violence, which is characteristic of beasts (sym-
bolized by the lion in the first canto) ; malice, strictly de-
fined, is the wickedness of one who understandingly in-
jures another by fraud, which is the wickedness charac-
teristic of man (symbol, the leopard in the first canto).
These and incontinence, which is a form of wickedness
from passion (symbol, the wolf in the first canto), are
"the three dispositions that Heaven will not have," ac-
cording to which Dante, following the "Nikomachean
Ethics," has divided into three classes the sinners of his
Inferno, that is to say, they are the three forms of the
4

50 FRANCESCO FLAMIN1

evil disposition, or wickedness, or infirmity of the soul.
But naturally, with this Aristotelian classification of
human vices, Alighieri, always orthodox, does not con-
tradict in the least the theological classification; for as
the other five mortal sins are punished in the circles of
the incontinent, so pride and envy are to be punished
in the city of the malicious. The Fathers of the Church
and the moralists have with one voice called pride the
mother and root of every sin; envy is her first-born
daughter, almost inseparable from her; and from the one
and the other, usually joined together, comes the guilt
of "every wickedness that earns hate in Heaven," bestial
or fraudulent. Therefore we find near the foundation
of the sad infernal edifice the proud giants of pagan
mythology; and Lucifer, who with accursed pride was
the "source of the fall" of a part of the angelic cohort, is
"bound down by all the weight of the world" among
the rocks on which rests the Inferno, in the center of the
earth, which is the center of the universe. De Sanctis
well observed that the deepest part of the blind gulf de-
scending from the man-beast like Vanni Fucci has its
climax in the "man of ice, the petrified man, — to a world
where movement gradually ceases until life disappears
entirely." As many men and angels as have sharpened
the intellect moved by insane pride to accomplish mon-
strous wickedness in defiance of their Creator, so many
are now fettered and frozen or reduced to carrion void
of intelligence, like "the emperor of the dolorous realm,"
who, mechanical instrument of divine justice, gnaws with
his three mouths Judas, Brutus and Cassius.

The partition of the Purgatorio corresponds to that of
the Inferno. The "obscure campagna," which we saw
before the entrance of the vale of the abyss, has its
counterpart here in the level tract which encloses the
Mount of Purgatory, where are the souls of the negli-
gent, that is, those who, neglecting to repent, died in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 51

contumacy of the Holy Church. And again the mount
of purgation, like the infernal gulf, is divided at the same
time into three and into nine parts: the mount "where
they look forward" has seven terraces receiving the sin-
ners of the seven capital vices, and the terrestrial para-
dise. But here the sins diminish in gravity as the sum-
mit is approached; hence the seven vices proceed up
the mountain in an inverse order from that of the Inferno,
— pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, wanton-
ness. The terrestrial paradise, at the summit, is transi-
tional to the celestial paradise. This, also divided into
three, according to the number of persons of the Trinity,
has the nine parts as well : the heavens of the Moon, of
Mercury, of Venus, of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, of
Saturn, wherein have place respectively the spirits inac-
tive and spirits operative, loving, knowing, militant,
judging, and contemplating, — and further the stellar
heaven and the crystalline heaven or primum mobile.
Above all, as we have seen, is the Empyrean, the limit
of the imagined journey of Dante.

The poet visits in flesh and blood the abodes of the
dead. In the early morning of Good Friday, April 8,
1300, the year of the famous jubilee (1301, according to
some authorities), he succeeds in escaping from a dark
wood, not knowing how he entered there, so "full of
sleep" was he when he left the right path. The wood is
in a valley, leaving which Dante finds himself upon a
desert slope forming the border of a hill lighted above
by the rising sun. He wishes to climb it ; but three wild
beasts, a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf bar his way;
and the third of them, advancing slowly toward him,
forces him back into the low dark place. Then, behold,
there appears a shade, who, when invoked by Dante with
tears, advises him to take another way and offers him-
self as guide. It is Virgil come to his rescue by the com-
mand of Beatrice, who, moved by a "gentle lady" in

52 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

heaven and by Lucia, has descended from her seat among
the blessed into the limbo of virtuous pagans to find
the singer of .ffineas and send him to Dante. Virgil
turns the poet from in front of the wild beast which has
prevented him from taking the short road to the beau-
tiful mountain, into another way, a path deep and wooded
leading to the bottom of the low place, that is, the wooded
place, where is the entrance to the Inferno. Thence he
takes him down through the nine circles of the abyss of
Hell till they reach the lowest depth, where Lucifer is.
The second part of the journey is up the Mount of Pur-
gatory culminating in the Terrestrial Paradise.

During this journey Virgil reassures Dante and pro-
tects him from time to time against the monsters on
guard at one and another part of the Inferno: Charon,
the demon, boatman for the souls spurred on by divine
justice to cross the Acheron; Minos, their judge, placed
at the beginning of the second circle, where the true
Inferno begins; Cerberus and Pluto, stationed at the
circles, respectively, of the gluttons and of the avaricious
and prodigal; Phlegyas, the ferryman of the little boat
that carries malignant souls to the farther side of the
Stygian marsh ; the Erynnis, who suddenly threaten the
poet from a tower rising amid the fiery red walls of
Dis; the Minotaur, custodian of the circle of the vio-
lent; and the Centaurs, who run along the border of the
boiling vermilion current of Phlegethon, piercing with
arrows "whatever soul emerges from the river of blood
farther than its degree of guilt allows." Dante and
Virgil cross together the most perilous passes; upon the
haunches of Geryon they descend into Malebolge; in the
pit of the Giants that "yawns in the very middle of the
malign field," they are taken up by Antaeus, clasped in
each other's embrace, and set down to the "icy crust"
of Cocytus, the frozen lake of traitors.

In the second kingdom, which the two poets reach by

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 53

a hidden path after descending it by grasping the
shaggy sides of Lucifer "from shag to shag," and then
afterward ascending from the center of the earth in the
opposite direction, — Virgil continues in his office. But
here he himself has need of counsel and part of the way
of a guide. Cato, the noble custodian of the Mount of
Purgatory, enlightens him at the first; Sordello acts as
guide to him and Dante when they visit the souls of
princes gathered in a little recess in the side of the moun-
tain ; Matilda is the guide in the terrestrial paradise. And
then upon the summit of the sacred mountain Virgil de-
parts; Beatrice assumes the place, appearing suddenly
"in a cloud of flowers" and amid a host of angels, on a
triumphal car drawn by a griffin, and preceded, sur-
rounded and followed by attendant symbols of the Holy
Scriptures. Cleansed from sin in Lethe, and regenerated
in the Eunoe, Dante, fixing his eyes upon his lady, is
carried at once among the blessed people and ascends
from the Triumph of Christ and of the Virgin to the
vision of the Trinity.

Under this fiction, constituting the literal significance
of the poem, is to be sought the hidden truth, which is
its allegorical significance. After the death of Beatrice
Dante had turned his steps "into ways not true, follow-
ing false images of good"; thus he found himself, not
knowing how, in vicious life. Arrived at thirty-five
years he left it, seeking to mount again by the practice
of virtue toward the Supreme Good. But the threefold
disposition to evil contracted during his deviations, es-
pecially that of incontinence, had sent him back into that
life; and he would have been damned, if by divine grace
and by the mediation of Beatrice, that is, of revealed
truth, which already, enclosed in "beautiful form" had
guided him in the right way, the voice of reason full and
direct had not come to his rescue.

Reason (Virgil) procures for Dante the only means he

54 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

has for saving himself; which is by meditation on the
various sins arising from the triple dispositions to which
he is subject, and upon the penalties that will be visited
upon them in eternity. In such meditation (the journey
among the lost) it, reason, is his guide and aids him
to triumph over the obstacles opposed to him by the pas-
sions (the rivers of Hell) and by perverse habits (the
infernal monsters). Redeeming himself thus from the
service of sin, Dante, following the counsels of the free
and righteous judgment (Cato), purifies himself and
rises to the perfection of the active life (the terrestrial
paradise) wherein earthly felicity consists. The "habit
of good choice" (Matilda) then guides him, released
from evil impulses, to the practice of the cardinal and
theological virtues: revealed truth (Beatrice) takes the
place of reason as his guide; and he, regenerate, is ele-
vated by it through the various steps of the contempla-
tive life (the heavens) up to the perfection of that life
(the Empyrean), in which, owing to the habit of con-
templation (St. Bernard), he foretastes celestial beati-
tude on gaining the ecstatic vision of the Supreme Good.
This is the truth hidden beneath the veil. Another
and profounder truth is added by the anagogic or mys-
tical signification. The redemption from sin that Dante
gains in reward of his will for good, by the divine mercy,
corresponds to the redemption of the human race which
was granted by that mercy when, in the fulness of time,
the "good Augustus" ruled the world in peace. Then
the human soul received the gift of power to free it-
self from slavery to sin by means of the just and right-
eous reason (Virgil) and to be admitted, by means of
justification, that is the return to the state of righteous-
ness (the ascent of the mountain), to the enjoyment in
the perfect life of the benefits of revealed truth (Bea-
trice), which borne by the Church (the triumphal car) is
the guide to the celestial beatitude.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 55

From this duplex truth springs the teaching, or moral.
Why, notwithstanding the sublime sacrifice of the Son
of God, do men go to perdition in such numbers? Why
does the wolf "not allow any to pass by her way, but
so prevents them as to destroy them," — that is, why
does passion forbid men to pass by the right way and
lead them to perdition? Why does not reason guide, as
it should, to earthly felicity through virtuous deeds and
revealed truth to the heavenly blessedness of the thought
of God?

The answer is given in a special allegorical figure
which Beatrice, — that is, this same revealed truth, — sol-
emnly enjoins the poet to describe for the admonishing
of mortals (Purgatorio, XXXII). Upon the triumphal car,
grown monstrous, sit a giant and a harlot, that is to
say that the corrupted Church is confused by two powers
in itself. And the giant, that is, the temporal power,
drags away the chariot, loosing it from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil to which the griffin (Christ)
has fastened it. The Church, therefore, can no longer
give to men the teachings of revealed truth. The Em-
pire can no longer direct the reason with its authority,
which has been usurped; hence man is a slave to weak-
ness and excess, and cannot succeed in bridling his per-
verse appetites. This evil condition of the soul is repre-
sented by the wolf ; this is the deepest moral and political
teaching of the Divine Comedy.

But the immortal part of the glorious poem is not ul-
tramundane, philosophical and theological; it is human,
artistic, and palpitating with emotion. From the disil-
lusionments and the severe experiences of exile, from
the wanderings in which this our wonderful peninsula
was seen in its most varied aspects of beauty, and fa-
miliar with poetic tradition in its exuberant fulness,
Dante drew into his imaginary world the real and the
dramatic in life. The empire and the papacy, the com-

$6 FRANCESCO FLAMINl

j

mime and the nobility, courtiers and ecclesiastics, — we
find them all associated in a vivid historic picture of the
Italian Middle Ages. In a thousand modes and a thou-
sand forms his satire lashes his contemporaries, especial-
ly the Florentines. Sometimes the poet's indignation
breaks out boldly and vigorously over the discords of
Italy, who, one time mistress of provinces, now servant
of crowned adventurers, forgets her place as the storied
and rightful seat of empire.

The episodes of Ciacco, the Florentine who describes
the corruptions of the "divided city" and predicts its dis-
aster; of Filippo Argefiti, rent by the muddy people of
the Styx, as it were for the vengeance of the author;
of Farinata degli Uberti, magnanimous and intrepid
even in his burning tomb; of Ser Brunetto, who heaps
plebeian insults on his native Florence ; and those of Sor-
dello, Forese Donati, Cacciaguida, and others, are won-
ders of picture no less than of poesy, "in which" (I say
with Isidore Del Lungo) "the old Commune and its
memories, the Florentine family and the Italian city, the
glories, the sins, the disasters of the nation live again
under our eyes."

Note also the great originality of Alighieri. He has
expressed the spirit of the age in a work wonderful for
harmony of line and vigor of movement; he has intro-
duced the protagonist, himself, with his own passions,
angry moods, and desires; he has drawn from the most
varied sources, — the Bible, the Fathers of the Church,
the philosophers and theologians, the Latin classics and
others,— everywhere impressing the seal of his genius.
Stories like those of the death of Count Ugolino (Inferno,
XXXIII) and the love and death of Francesca da Rim-
ini (Inferno, V), are not read without a thrill of deep
emotion. In the bolgia of robbers the heap of men and
of serpents and of the bodies which turn to ashes and
from ashes turn again to bodies, is described with trans-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 57

cendent vividness. One would say that the poet had
really been a spectator at that supernatural marvel ! The
imagination of the poet has never given to the mind of
the artist such clearness of outlines and such colors of
reality: in Dante the word paints or carves; the image,
giving life to the word, redoubles its power. Not a use-
less epithet, not a superfluous accessory ; the restraint of
art holds the whole wisely and deliberately within limits
most strict and rigorous.

Together with the sense of proportion there are in the
work a marvelous lucidity of expression even of the
most abstruse conceptions, the ideas least easy to con-
vey; language flexibly accommodating itself to the idea
and, most mobile, varying from episode to episode, catch-
ing the moving image of the subtly observed reality in
flight, as it were, and fixing it; and lastly, a singular
mastery of the rhymes, now harsh and rough, now soft
and smooth, and of the rhythm, now excited and vibrant,
now melodiously caressing; making Dante not solely
the greatest of our own poets, but one of the very first
of all times and of all nations. All the classic culture
of the Italian laity, which we have seen perpetuating it-
self in the Middle Ages, reached its perfection in him;
all the Middle Age lives again in his poem, where the
great artist passes repeatedly without effort from the
grotesque to the sublime, from the observation of na-
ture to the contemplation of the mysteries of Divinity.

As we have said, Virgil represents in the Commcdia the
reason made perfect in the fulness of time. Therefore
the instructions he gives to Dante in guiding him from
the evil life — the dark forest — to the sweetness of the
virtuous life — the divine forest — are the philosophic
teachings by whose means reason leads to temporal hap-
piness, as we read in the De Monarchic* (III, 15) ; and
the first two parts of the poem hide under the poetic fic-
tion a real treatise on morality derived mainly from the

58 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Ethics of Aristotle and the comments upon it of St.
Thomas.

The Convivio is a fruit of the studies Dante made in
preparation for his great work, though it was written
later. It was so entitled because the author spread in it
a banquet of wisdom for those who "are for various rea-
sons deficient therein;" it consists of allegorico-philo-
sophic or doctrinal canzoni, which are the meats, and of
a commentary in vernacular prose in the form of trea-
tises, or tracts which constitute the bread. The canzoni
were to number fourteen and the tracts fifteen, the
first serving as an introduction; but only three of the
songs and four of the tracts were written. Yet, even
so, the work has much importance, whether from the
opinions expressed in it which form the basis of many
passages and images in the Commedia, or from the fact
that Dante in using the popular language, for the first
time in Italy, in an original prose work of scientific ar-
gument, introduced meanings and distinctions unknown
to the translators or imitators who had preceded him,
and adapted the language without degrading it to the
laws and forms of the ancient idiom. On the one side,
then, the Convivio is related to the Commedia, on the other
to the Vita Nova. It is like the Vita Nova in the mingled
form of verse and prose, in the large part that is given
to comments, and in the similarity of language, which
with Dante is always the Florentine vernacular ; and, fur-
ther, the two have in common the character of a woman
noble and pious, with this difference, — that in the Vita
Nova she is a living breathing creature, but in the Con-
vivio the personification of philosophy.

Of the vernacular, or rather vernaculars, of Italy, Dante
speaks again in a Latin treatise which was intended to
comprise more books than the two we have, and which
doubtless belongs to the time of the poet's exile, —
the De vulgari eloquentia. It is our earliest Ars poetica;

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 59

in the first book the author discourses of language in
general, and in particular of the Italian dialects; in the
second book he explains with great exactness the metrical
laws of the canzone. In his review of the dialects of Italy,
quite dispassionate and free from errors and caprices,
Alighieri includes all, not excepting his own, in the same
censure; but the opponents of the primacy of the Flor-
entines in language, when the famous question regarding
it arose in the sixteenth century, continuing even to our
day, were wrong in claiming the authority of Dante.
For he has reference solely to the exigencies of the
tragic style, as it was then called, that is, of the style
adapted to lofty poetry, for which the canzone is the ap-
propriate measure; and for this it seemed to him that
none of the dialects could serve without such changes
and enrichments as to give rise to a special form of lan-
guage, illustre, aulica, curiale, — the one that he and his
brother artists employed in the canzone on didactic and
amorous themes.

Dante had already expressed in the Convivio his im-
perialistic theory. He unfolds it with copious scholastic
distinctions and syllogisms, in the three books of De
Monarchia, written probably at a later period. In this
Latin treatise, he maintains the necessity of a universal
monarchy, argues that for this the Roman people was
destined by God, and upholds, contrary to the theory
of the Guelphs, the reciprocal independence of the papacy
and the empire, both deriving their authority directly
from God. It is therefore an appropriate gloss to the
political theory underlying the Commcdia and reveals a
phase of Dante's mind not to be overlooked. This is
further manifested in the Dantean Epistles written in
Latin, serious and full of Biblical images with the em-
phatic tone which is found in the political writings of
Pier della Vigna, and which is recommended to epistolog-
raphers in the Aries dictanti, In it and (not to speak

60 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

of a Questio de aqua et terra of doubtful authenticity) in
two eclogues to Giovanni del Virgilio, master of gram-
mar at Bologna, the author of the Commedia shows him-
self a Latin writer far inferior, as were other writers
of Latin in his day, to that which he was in the mother
tongue.

Thus, this idiom, not in use more than sixty years
as a literary medium, and then but seldom and uncer-
tainly, passed at a bound from infancy to maturity. In
Tuscany, where the best writings that followed were in
the noble Florentine tongue, it served, not many decades
later, for the exquisite subtleties of the art of Petrarch
in lyric poetry, and in prose for the multiform creations
of Boccaccio.

Francesco Petrarch was born July 20, 1304, at Arezzo,
where his father, Petracco, a notary of Florence, had
taken refuge with his wife, Eletta Canigiani, in 1302,
having been, like Dante, exiled from Florence. His
proper name was Francesco di Petracco, but by caprice
he Latinized it into Petrarca. After he had pursued his
first studies at Pisa, he went with his father's family
to Avignon, and from there was sent to Carpentras
(1315-19), where his tutor was Convenevole da Prato,
a grammarian and rhetorician of some renown; thence
to Montepellier (1319-23) to pursue the study of law.
But for this he had no vocation; the reading of the
* classics attracted and absorbed him. The poet himself
relates (ScniL, XVI, i), how his father in an excess of
anger threw into the fire many volumes of ancient au-
thors, and how great were his despair and sorrow.

From Bologna, where he had gone to finish his legal
studies, he returned to Avignon in 1325, on account of
the death of his father, whom his mother did not long
survive. He was then free to give himself wholly to
his chosen studies and also to the gay and pleasant life
of the Papal court at Avignon. He took minor orders;

OT

ii

FRANCESCO FLAM INI

•of r de aqua et terra of doubtful authentic^

eclogues to Giovanni del Virgilio,
t»ir at Bologna, the author of the Com-.

iter far inferior, as were other 4I^^H
of Latin in his day, to that which he v.*
tongue.

Thus, this idiom, not in use more than .
as a literary medium, and then but seldom an
tainly, passed at a bound from infancy to maturity. In
Tur here the best writings that followed were in

the nob -irved, not many decades

ieties of the art of Petrarch
the multiform creations

THE PRESENTATION OF PETRARCH AND LAURA TO
THE EMPEROR CHARLES IV , ,

From a Painting by Vaczlar Brozik

.
,

anger threw into the fire n imes of ancient au-

thors, and how great were his despair and sorrow.

From Bologna, where he had gone to finish his legal
studies, he returned to Avignon in 1325, on account of
the death of his father, whom his mother did not ioag
survive. He was then free to give himse- y to

n studies and also to the gay and
•e Papal court at Avignon. He took minor

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 61

but this did not restrain him from either Platonic or sen-
tual love-affairs. He conceived a Platonic affection for
Laura, probably the daughter of Audibert de Noves and
the wife of Hugues de Sade, whom he saw for the first
time in the church of Santa Clara of Avignon, April
6, 1327. The restlessness consequent upon this affection
and a natural desire for novelty, led him to spend sev-
eral years in travel through Europe. In 1330 he was
at Lombes with his intimate friend Giacomo Colonna,
who was bishop there; then in northern France, in
Flanders and in Germany, — all absorbed in the observa-
tion of nature and in searching for the scattered literary
remains of antiquity. Thanks to the protection of the
Colonnas affcTliis almost fraternal intimacy with Car-
dinal Giacmo Colonna, he was enabled to visit Rome,
to his great gratification, for his imagination was filled
with thoughts of its grandeur.

In the same year, 1337, he sought rest and quiet in
the Alpine solitude of Vaucluse, near the source of the
Sorga, not far from Avignon, — a place that became most
dear to him, was described in his letters and celebrated
in his verse. There he retired when he wished to devote
himself to congenial studies, — to "that valley enclosed
on every side" and beside "that swift and clear stream,"
more delightful to him than all other rivers, because,
descending to the plain it flowed along by the home of
his Laura.

His fame had now become so great that he received
the honor of the poet laureate's crown. The offer came
to him simultaneously September i, 1340, from the Uni-
versity of Paris and from the Senate of Rome. He chose
to accept the one from Rome, and after he had been
interrogated by King Robert of Naples upon various
questions, was solemnly crowned upon the Campidoglio
on Easter Day, 1341. He betook himself then to Parma
with Azzo da Correggio, the new lord of that city ; near

62 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

it, in Selvapiana, was renewed the inspiration he had al-
ready felt at Vaucluse, and he finished L' Africa, the

1 poem from which he promised himself increased fame.

' Then he returned to Avignon, but did not remain long;
in 1343 he was in Naples, sent by Clement VI to Queen
Joanna, who had that year succeeded King Robert, to
attend there to the rights of the Holy See. The next
ten years he passed alternately in Upper Italy and in
France.

In 1347, when Cola di Rienzo made his famous at-
tempt to restore the ancient Roman Republic, he imag-
ined that the magnificent dream might be permanently
realized and left Avignon intending to go to Rome; but
having learned on the way that the edifice improvised
by the brave tribune was falling to ruin, he went in-
stead to Parma, where he learned to his sorrow that
Laura had died at Avignon April 16, 1348. In 1353 he
left that city of Provence forever and established him-
self in Italy. At Milan, honored by important embassies
from the archbishop Giovanni Visconti and from his
nephews and successors (1353-60) ; at Padua, received
with festivities by the Carraresi (1361-2) ; at Venice pre-
sented by the Republic with a house upon the Riviera
degli Schiavoni (1362-7) ; he lived amid the activities
and the pleasures of glory, indulging from time to time
by travel his desire for seeing new places and visiting old
friends. After 1370 he lived at Arqua upon the Euga-
nean Hills, in a little villa of his own, where he en-
joyed the rural life with reading, thought and prayer and
the ministrations of his natural daughter Francesca and
his son-in-law, who was worthy of her. Here he passed
away tranquilly the night of July 18-19, *374» m n^s
study, where he was found with his head resting upon
a book.

Few writers have been as fortunate in life as Petrarch.
His house in Arezzo was cared for as a monument; in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 63

1351 the Florentines sent Giovanni Boccaccio to Padua
to announce to him the restitution of the property that
had been confiscated from his father and to offer him a
chair in the Studio, which he refused; he also refused
several times the offer of an apostolic secretaryship;
canonries and prebends offered him splendid incomes;
the Emperor Charles IV created him a Count palatine.
Yet he was not, as might be thought, happy; because *"
of all the anxieties, the anguished struggles, and the con-
tradictions of an unquiet soul occasioned especially by
the dissidence, — most natural in a man belonging to an
age of transition from the mediaeval to the Renaissance
— between the pagan love of glory and the ascetic con-
tempt for the vanities of the world. These contrasts, if
they were "contrary winds in the serene life," were the
animating and enlivening breath of his art. They are
mirrored even in the Canzonicrc, his unique work in the
vernacular and his highest glory.

The Canzonicre (Rcrum vulgarium fragntenta) is a col-
lection of sonnets, songs, ballate, madrigals and sestine
which the author, although he regarded, or affected to
regard, such compositions as miga; or nugcllca, — trifles
— has placed together and divided into two parts and ar-
ranged according to aesthetic or rather psychologic dis-
tinctions, grouping together the verses that refer to one
event and those reflecting the same mental state. It
contains amatory verse and poems on various other sub-
jects. The former are much more numerous ; voicing the
phases of the poet's love for Laura; the sorrow of see-
ing it unreturned, the enthusiastic admiration for her
perfections; the constant fluctuations of the soul at-
tacked by opposing sentiments. We have already seen
in the poets of the dolce stile inspiration placed instead
of the formulas of the schools as the canons of art; and
to them Petrarch owes much and by many characteris-
tics can be classified with them. But he is the first in

64 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Italy who, leaving aside the abstractions of a mystic
ideality, interrogated his heart, analyzed his passions
with the calmness of the psychologist, and represented
them in infinite forms and in most varied gradations.
And the representation is no less humanly true than
artistically perfect ; for Laura, although enthroned in the
mind of the poet, never ceases to be a woman. While
with Dante and the lyric poets of the thirteenth cen-
tury who wrote in his manner, the creature beloved and
sung appears detached from real life, like certain
Giottesque figures of saints, painted upon a ground of
golden light as if to intimate that even in life the ef-
fulgence of divinity enfolds them, [there is not a poem
of Petrarch's that gives an intimation of any other back-
ground to the sweet face and the blond locks of the
most beautiful of the gentle ladies of Provence than the
azure of the sky and the green of the meadow or the
forest. Hence the pastoral idyllic spirit that beautifies
and animates so much of the Canzoniere, in which the
scenes are laid for the most part near the "sweet hills,"
between the Durance and the Sorga, where Laura was
born and lived, and along the "clear, cool and sweet
waters" of the Sorga. These rivers inspired one of his
most charming canzoni. Even after death Laura ap-
pears to the poet, now as a nymph risen from the clear
depths of the Sorga, now as a lady wandering for solace
amid the grass and the flowers.

Naturally, since Laura was unapproachable by the
poet, the elegiac note dominates all others in his poems.

"Ahi! from sorrow Italian song has its birth and its beginning"

exclaims Leopardi. But his harp is not therefore of
one string; rather he has enclosed in his wonderful
r verse the story of a soul in its conflicts, in its weak-
nesses, in its inconsistencies, — an entirety of emotions
new and highly poetic, which found at once and will find

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 65

in «v»ry aga an echo in the human heart. And the mas- t
tery of style and verse in which he clothes those thoughts
is marvelous; marvelous are the ease of the form, the
fulness and elegance of the language, the harmony of the
strophes. Mingling in his verse the flowers of Tuscan
word and phrase he has unconsciously carried out as no
other better the Dantean theory of the De Vulgare Elo-
quentia; his is truly the language illustrc or atilico of the
supremest form of poetry, serving not only for themes
of love, but also for civil and patriotic subjects. The
canzone in which Petrarch exhorts the nobility of Italy
to "cast away hate and anger" and not to trust to the
unfaithful mercenary soldiery —

"O my Italy, although my speaking may be in vain"—

is among the most eloquent, bravest and most magnani-
mous of our lyrics. Wonderful, too, is that other —

"Noble spirit that rulest those members" —

addressed to one who was to be a new saviour of the
Roman people, believed by many to be Cola di Rienzo,
but by some applied to Stefano Colonna the younger, to
Bosone da Gubbio and to others. In this the poet, in-
spired by the memories of Rome's ancient grandeur,
pleads for the salvation of Rome and of Italy.

It was observed by De Sanctis that Laura, in the
poems lamenting her death, seems more living than in
the others written while she was in the world. In truth,
with her death begins that imagined exchange of loving
sentiment which was not possible with the living, whence
a new and fresh source of inspiration for the poet. In
the later years, from 1357, there is a tendency to glorify
the dead, after the manner of Dante in exaltation of
Beatrice. In the measure of the Commcdia and with
analogous allegorical fantasy of content, he wrote / trionfi
("The Triumphs") in which he imagines successively

ft

66

FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the triumphs of six symbolic figures: Lpye, Chastity,
Death, Fame, Time, and Divinity. They are somewhat
cold; the morality and the enumeration of historic per-
sonages in which they abound are suited better to a trea-
tise or to a chronicle than to a poem ; but the part that
refers to Laura is less arid than the rest, and the descrip-
tion of her death is most beautiful.

Petrarch's lyrics are not only varied in mood and
psychologic content, but in the elements of style and
technique they seem to be inspired from many sources.
Having lived long in Provence, he owed something to
the art of the troubadours, especially to Arnold Danielle ;
certain not praiseworthy artificialities which his imita-
tors exaggerate seem to proceed from that source. Cino
de Pistoia, of the school of the (fioice~stile) shows such
refinements of imagery and phrase tffat he may have
had influence upon Petrarch, who thought highly of him.
Finally, the better part of the style of the Canzoniere is
derived from classic culture, much more varied and pro-
found in the singer of Laura than in Alighieri.

It has already been seen with what fervid love Pe-
1 trarch had from his first youth given attention to the
study of ^anHqmtyy especially Roman. By these studies
he accomplished notable results, seeking out and publish-
ing the works of Latin authors, of which he gathered
during his travels a considerable library. Nor did he
content himself with transcribing them or having them
copied ; but he placed glosses upon the margins, collated
different manuscripts, and studied corrections of the text.
Virgil, Cicero and Seneca exerted a greater influence
upon him than any others ; among the Greeks he desired
to know especially Plato and Homer; of the first he ob-
tained some knowledge from the Calabrian monk Bar-
laam at Avignon in 1342, of the second he could read in
1367 a translation made at h4s charge by another Italian
not ignorant of the Greek, Leonzio Pilato. Petrarch's

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 67

cult of antiquity, extending to every sort of remnant or ^
relic of it, had something in it of fanaticism. Not only
did he baptize more than one of his friends with the
names of personages of Hellas or of Latium, but he wrote
letters in Latin to Homer, Virgil, Horace and Livy.
Nevertheless, in certain respects he has the modern spirit
even in this; and notwithstanding some prejudice, some
obsolete and perverse opinion, the air of the new time
breathes through most of his Latin verse and prose.

Among the former, the one to which Petrarch gave
most labor and from which he promised himself immor-
tality is L' Africa, nine books of hexameters concerning
the exploits of Scipio Africanus. Following Titus
Livius, he sings of the Second Punic War, giving a
poetic dress with amplification of some episodes to the
narrative of the great Roman historian; it seemed to
him that in this was sufficient poetry; and since he was
ignorant of the existence of the Puniche of Silius Italicus,
he «made much of the newness of the epic material of
which it treated. The poem, begun toward 1339 and
finished in 1342, is mediocre in content and form; the
personages have too much of the abstract, and Scipio is
a poorer pious .ffineas; the only beauties in it are some
passages of lyric inspiration, as, for example, that of
Sophonisba in Book V. We moderns prefer to read the
twelve eclogues (Bucolicnm carmen), and the poetic epis-
tles in three books, in which Petrarch has given fugitive
impressions and sincere impulsive sentiments. The
eclogues are imitations of Virgil's with more of the me-
diaeval characteristic of continued allegory; each actor
of the little pastoral drama either represents some his-
torical personage, or symbolizes some idea; the events
of the time are often adumbrated in a way somewhat
disguised. The letters in hexameter, Epistola metrics, ad-
dressed to friends, afford some knowledge of the author's
life; now he describes his daily occupations, now he

6B FRANCESCO FLAMlMI

i

speaks of the work he is engaged upon, or of his Iov6
for Laura, now he denounces his detractors, again he
apostrophizes Italy. They are not lacking, either, in
artistic beauty. Wonderfully fine is that one in which
the poet, from the height of the Monginevra, salutes
the greening extent of the Lombard plain, — "Salve, cara
Deo tcllus sanctissima, Salve."

Of Petrarch's works in Latin prose some are erudite
compilations. In the De viris illust ribus, drawing espe-
cially from Livy, but always in his own words, he gives
with order and clearness the lives of twenty-four famous
characters of antiquity, all Romans except Alexander,
Pyrrhus and Hannibal, dropping the pagan supernatural-
ism and making an application of practical morality.
This aim is hi view also in the books Rerum memoran-
darum, which contain instruction given by means of ex-
amples,— anecdotes in reference to a series of ancient
and modern characters, in imitation of Valerius Maxi-
mus.

Other works are geographic, as instance the Itinerar-
ium Syriacum; others polemic, as the De sui ipsius et
tnultorum aliorum ignorantia. The most important are the
treatises moral or ascetic, though of a tendency explicit-
ly mediaeval. In these the subjective element predomi-
nates. In the Secretum, or "the contempt of the world,"
Petrarch searches his own heart to its deepest recesses
and exposes its unending conflict. In the treatises De
•vita solitaria and De ocio religiosorum, while he exalts soli-
tude and the monastic life, he evidently has before his
memory the Romans, who were great because, joined
by strict social chains, they were strong in action.

The De remediis utrius que fortunes, a voluminous work
of the poet's old age, in which he teaches with only a
semblance of dialogue form, how man should carry him-
self in prosperous and in adverse fortune, has amid its
rigid asceticism examples and citations derived from the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 69

classics. A living image of the man is afforded by these
"treatises, as of the poet by the Canzoniere; they are sup-
plemented in this respect by the copious correspondence
in Latin prose, collected, edited and published by Pe-
trarch himself. There are twenty-four books of "familiar
letters" (1326-66), seventeen of Senili, written after 1361,
one of Varie, and one of Sine titulo, that is, without the
name of the one to whom they are addressed, which were
not published by the author because of the too free lan-
guage in which the habits of the pontifical court at Avig-
non are censured in them. However, there is more eru-
dition than sincerity in the epistles of Petrarch, more
care to emulate the letters of Cicero and of Seneca, than
to express faithfully his own emotions.

A friend and admirer of Petrarch, the third of the
great Tuscans of the Trecento, had like him a desire to
know thoroughly the art of the Romans; he wrote like-
wise a Latin better than that of the scholastics and of
Alighieri, but far from the elegance of some of our later
writers; and in the vernacular, besides various valuable
writings, he has left us one masterpiece. As Petrarch
was the greatest lyric writer, so Boccaccio was the great-
est Italian prose writer of the early centuries.

Giovanni Boccaccio was born at Paris in 1313, the
natural son of Boccaccio di Chellino, a merchant of Cer-
taldo in Val d'Elsa and of a noble French woman named
Jeanne. His father intended him for a commercial life;
and about 1330 he resided in Naples, where the Flor-
entine trade was highly prosperous and the merchants
of the Tuscan city were welcomed and rose to power.
Here, amid the charms of nature and the splendors of
art, in the light of knowledge shed upon the city from
the court of King Robert, his intellect opened to the ap-
preciation of the beautiful. His father had allowed him
to leave business for the study of law; but he gave his
attention more to literary studies, frequenting the so-

70 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

ciety of the court and the nobility, making love and writ-
ing poetry. Maria d'Aquino, a natural daughter of King
Robert, who was married to a gentleman of the court,
attracted his attention in church one Holy Saturday,
April n, 1338; like Petrarch he fell in love; but the lady
was not like Laura; she returned the love of the young
poet, encouraged him to write verses and stories, and
was for a long time his blond and beautiful lady, his
"Fiammetta."

But in 1340-1, recalled by his father, Boccaccio was
obliged to leave the gay court of Naples for towered
Florence, and the idle society of ladies and cavaliers for
the work-a-day people of a busy community. In 1346
he was at Ravenna ; in the two succeeding years at Forli,
with the Ordelaffi, and again at Naples ; then once more
at Florence, honored by his fellow citizens with offices
and embassies. He was sent to the papal court at Avig-
non in 1354 and 1365, and to Rome in 1367; but the lack
of a permanent office involved him in straits from which
he made many unsuccessful attempts to free himself.
Leaving the capital of the kingdom where he had been
invited by the great seneschal Niccolo Acciaiuoli, a Flor-
entine whom he had known at his first sojourn in that
city, he found noble hospitality in 1363 with Petrarch in
Venice. Nevertheless he stayed there only three months,
and, jealous of his own dignity and independence, refused
the proffers of his friend and of others. In 1373 he ob-
tained at last from the Signoria of Florence an annual
allowance of a hundred florins as a public expositor of
Dante's Commedia; but in the autumn of the next year
he was obliged by illness to retire to the castle of Cer-
taldo, the home of his ancestors, where he died Decem-
ber 21, 1375.

Boccaccio left many works, in prose and in verse, in
Italian and in Latin. In his love poems he gives some
weak reflection of the lyric splendor of Dante, whom he

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 71

passionately admired, and of whom he wrote an en-
thusiastic biography, in addition to a commentary on
the first seventeen cantos of the Inferno. He followed
often in the steps of Petrarch as well, in these poems,
though not without some originality. But more original
and important are his romances and his longer poems, —
the Fildcolo and the Fiammctta, the T-cseidc, the Filostrato,
the Amcto, the Amoroso, visionc and the Ninfale fiesolano
("Nymph of Fiesole").

He began writing the Fildcolo in 1338 at the instance
of Maria d'Aquino; it narrates the love of Floris and
Blanchefleur, the material having been drawn, as it
seems, from a Franco-Venetian poem now lost except
from oral tradition and a remembered song. It is a long
romance in prose, a mixture of classic mythology and
Christianity in the dress of Chivalry ; it abounds in min-
ute descriptions, interminable speeches, tangled threads
of historic and mythologic names. But the fantastic
story of these two lovers often adumbrates the actual
love of the poet, and the smiling natural beauty and the
gallant society of Naples are mirrored in more than one
passage, rendering the book less tiresome than it other-
wise would be.

Better is La Fiammetta, another romance in prose, in
which the leading character (Maria d'Aquino) recounts
to the ladies, in a style between the elegiac and the de-
clamatory, the vicissitudes of her passionate love for
Panfilo (Boccaccio). Although the classic erudition
seems superfluous and in a woman's mouth inappropri-
ate; and though the imitation of the Heroidi of Ovid
as well as of his Amorcs, and in one scene of the
Ippolito of Seneca, is not always in harmony with the
subject, yet the realistic element and the psychologic
analysis, notable for that time, render this little book
unique and attractive.
Among the poems of Boccaccio the Tcscide takes by

72 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

its length the first place. It is in. ottava rima, is divided
into twelve books with solemn invocations; is inter-
spersed with pagan divinities, descriptions of battles and
festivals, reviews of heroes; intended to be for Italy
what was for the Romans, if not the JEneid, at least the
Thebaid of Statius, which was in great part the author's
model. In the first two books is told the story of the
war that Theseus waged against the Amazons and Cre-
ontes, King of Thebes ; the following books have for their
theme the adventures of two noble Thebans, Arcite and
Palamon, who, prisoners at Athens, are both in love
with Emilia, sister of the Amazonian queen. But the
texture of the poem, more like that of a novel than of an
epic, is, notwithstanding the abundance of classic orna-
ment, altogether mediaeval and chivalresque ; the highest
merit of the feeble and prolix poem is in the freedom of
certain descriptive stanzas.

But it is surpassed in artistic value by Filostrato, which,
written in the same measure, but with truer sentiment
and simpler form, tells of the love of Troilus and Cres-
sida, the daughter of Calchas. The title Filostrato, ac-
cording to the poet, means a man "vanquished and sub-
dued by love ;" and so it is with the hero whose passion
is represented in alternations of felicity and grief, of
despair and intoxication, differing much from the Latin
or French sources from which he took the material in
part, and recalling in the lamentations many suggestions
and some distinct recollections of Dante's lyrics.

Boccaccio certainly had Dante's work in mind when
he wrote the Amcto and the Amoroso, visione. The Ameto
or "Nymph of Ameto," written in 1341 or '2, which be-
longs to the class of compositions with which the poets
celebrated the beauties of their time, is the earliest writ-
ing of a pastoral nature in Italian verse. Short poems
in terzine are introduced into the prose story of the loves
of Ameto and Lia. The perfecting of man by the in-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 73

strumentality of the cardinal and theological virtues,
personified by seven nymphs, appears to be the subject
of the moral allegory, which, despite the license of some
of the descriptions and stories, is adumbrated from be-
ginning to end.

Another allegorical work is the Amoroso, visione (1342),
consisting of fifty cantos in icrza rima, where the imita-
tion of the Commedia is much more marked. Through
this poem runs a vast acrostic: the first letters of the
first lines of each triplet form two sonnets codato, that
is, with added lines and one doubly codato, containing
a dedication to Maria d' Aquino. One of these sonnets
recalls the lyric poetry of the dolcc stile novo; but the
fundamental conception of the poem itself is formed
on that of the Commedia; since, little as the florid fea-
tures of Maria d'Aquino accord with the ethereal out-
lines of the donna angelicata, she is exalted in the Amo-
roso, visione to represent feminine beauty serving as an
instrument for the salvation or regeneration of the soul.

Far better, however, is the Ninfale Fiesolano, a little
mythological idyl in tcrza rima, Ovidian in inspiration,
telling of the tragically ending love of the shepherd Af-
frico and the nymph Mensola, whose names are perpetu-
ated by two little rivers of Fiesole. In this the confu-
sion of pagan with Christian, of mythology and chivalry,
is not met with, the plot, akin to those of the antique ero-
tic stories of Greece, is developed naturally, ending in
the familiar legends of the foundation of Fiesole and of
Florence; the stanzas are in general well constructed,
here and there approaching the manner of the popular
roundelays.

Having gained facility in fictitious writing by these
works in prose and verse, and inspired more or less di-
rectly by his love for Maria d'Aquino, Boccaccio began
his masterpiece, the product of the full maturity of his
genius, the Decameron, upon which he was engaged from

74 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

1348 to 1353. It consists of one hundred stories, divided
into ten days, and preceded by a proem in which the au-
thor describes vividly the pestilence that devastated Flor-
ence in 1348. He imagines that seven young women and
three men, in order to escape the horrors of the epidemic,
betake themselves to a villa north of the city; and that
here every day for ten days each one tells a story, — an
amorous ballad being sung as a finish to each day's tales.
With the exception of the first day, the one "whose turn
it is to preside, king or queen, decides the theme to be
treated in the ten novels of the day. Thus, in addition
to the framework in which the novels are set, there is
a certain connection among them, conducing to the sym-
metry and effectiveness of the book, — as is the case with
such oriental tales as "The Seven Wise Men" and "The
Thousand and One Nights." The various members of
the company have each their characteristic peculiarities
and appropriate names.

Many of the tales of the Decameron are known in
older versions, oriental, French, or Italian. Sometimes
Boccaccio used traditions, sometimes he narrated actual
contemporaneous events; it is difficult to fix with cer-
tainty a direct relationship between his narratives and
the fables, miracles and legends sacred or profane, which
they most resemble. There is a great variety of plots
and characters. Besides novels with full, involved plots
like that of Madonna Bertola (II, 6) and that of the
Count of Anguersa (II, 8), there are others, themes of
mere jest and trickery. Next to a flock of light or wan-
ton women comes Griselda, heroically good, whose story
(X, 10) so pleased Petrarch that he translated it into
Latin.

The Decameron is a mirror of Italian life in the tre-
cento; customs and types, drawn from the actual, are
pictured in life-like form and color. Look where we
will, from Ser Ciappelletto to the Belcolore, from Calan-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 75

drino to Griselda, from Masso da Lamporecchio to Frate
Alberto, — we shall find a picture so real, drawn with a
pencil so free, such breadth of outline, such care of de-
tail, as in the prose writings of the Middle Ages none can
be found more human and altogether more perfect.

The Decameron is very licentious and immoral. This
the author himself recognized, especially after 1361,
when his conscience was disturbed by the visit of one
Gioacchino Ciani, formerly companion of Pietro Petroni,
of Siena, who had died with the reputation of a saint.
However, of the hundred novels, thirty are customarily
placed in the hands of the young without fear of
evil influence. As says Carducci: "In this great human
comedy of the plebeian Certaldesian, the ludicrous, the
grotesque, the trivial and the sublime are made use of
against cavaliers and friars and against the bourgeoisie
in part, as by no one else after Aristophanes and be-
fore Moliere. The Decameron, the human comedy of Gio-
vanni Boccaccio, is the only work comparable for uni-
versality to Dante's Dii'ina Commcdia."

With Alighieri he has another merit in common; as
Dante determined the language of poetry, so Boccaccio
first in Italy fixed the language of prose according to
the rules of art. His vocabulary is rich and varied, his
periods, usually full and complex, are well ordered, his
style a little florid, but skilfully formed upon Latin
models. His imitators exaggerate whatever is labored
and academic in his prose style ; but, well composed, such
prose was to be a model for our best cinqucccnto wri-
ters and a pleasure to foreigners. Among them the Cer-
taldese lived and lives in fame, grace to the Decameron;
for the other works we have noticed are little known
or circulated. The Corbaccio, composed after his chef
d'ccircrc, 1354-5, is a satirical invective in the form of a
vision, directed against a widow and against women in
general, and of little value. Neither are his Latin wri-

76 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tings noteworthy as works of art, though of some his-
toric importance. They consist of a number of epistles,
seventeen allegoric eclogues, an attempt at a geograph-
ical dictionary, a compilation of mythological subjects, —
De genealogia De&rum — a series of short biographies of il-
lustrious women, — De daris Mulieribus — and nine books,
— De casibus virorum illustrium, — intended to show the
vanity of worldly things.

The light of art and science shed by this glorious Tus-
can triumvirate was not confined within the limits of
our peninsula. If the influence of Dante outside of Italy
was slight, the masterpieces of Petrarch and Boccaccio
were soon at home in all modern literatures. In remote
England they were rendered familiar almost immediate-
ly, being imitated by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of
British poetry (1328-1400), in the Canterbury Tales.

CHAPTER III
BEGINNINGS OF THE RENAISSANCE

USCANY, which gave to Italy almost simultane-
ously Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, was in
the fourteenth century not only the center of
our literary life, but a most busy and produc-
tive literary workshop. And all the others, their con-
temporaries, were indebted to those three supremely
great authors.

The fame of Dante, already wide-spread when he died,
grew rapidly. In the third decade of the century the
first commentaries on his poem were written by Grazi-
olo Bambagliuoli and Jacopo della Lana; in 1373 Boc-
caccio was chosen public lecturer on it; the Commedia
was explained in the churches; Dante professorships

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 77

were founded in various cities of Italy, There was, in-
deed, opposition; Francesco Stabili — better known by
the name Cecco d'Ascoli (1269-1327), an astrologer who
was afterward burned alive as a sorcerer — with dog-
matic arrogance accused Dante of heresy in a dry, rude
poem in clownish language — entitled L'Acerba, and com-
posed of strophes of six lines, a transformation of the
Dantean triplet. However, this poem — if a work from
which poetic imagination is conspicuously absent can
be so called — as it was doctrinal in theme and intended
in a way to rival the Commedia, may be said to begin the
series of imitations of Dante.

These imitations are not at all worthy of the greatest
of our writers ; it may be because only mediocrity would
attempt to follow in his steps, or it may be because to
the generation immediately following his death the doc-
trinal content of his work appealed more strongly than
the poetic, and the book seemed rather a miracle of sci-
ence than an artistic masterpiece. The Dottrinak of his
son Jacopo is poor enough. Fazio degli Uberti, grand-
nephew of Farinata, who was born in exile in Pisa and
passed his life wandering from court to court in Italy,
gathered descriptions of the world under the title Ditta-
mondo, feigning to have traversed it guided by the an-
cient geographer Solinus. It is a poem in terza rma,
full of reminders of Dante, where it is not mere enume-
ration of places and historic events, or the treatise of
Solinus merely versified.

In the Quadriregio Federigo Frezzi, of Foligno, has
given us, in triplets, a vast aggregation of allegories and
symbolic personifications, confused and abstruse, in the
form of a journey through the four kingdoms of Love,
of Satan, of the Vices and of the Virtues — regions alto-
gether fantastic, having not even the reason for being
that they existed in popular tradition. This poem, writ-
ten in the last years of the trecento, is less rude in form

78 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

than the Dittamondo and also more varied as regards imi-
tation; for, while it owes ideas, imagery and measure
to Dante, in certain descriptions it recalls Boccaccio; but
the author, who was a Dominican theologian and from
1403 Bishop of Foligno, sacrificed the poetry to the
philosophic-doctrinal and scientific content of his work.
This is the case also with the Fimerodia ("Famous song
of Love") by Jacopo del Pecora, of Montepulciano, a
glorification of virtuous love, written between 1390 and
1397 in the prison where the author was confined by the
Florentines for political reasons; and also with the Pie-
tosa Fonte of Zenone da Pistoia, an apotheosis of Pe-
trarch, who was personally known to the author.

Petrarch, imitated later in innumerable love-lyrics, can
not be said to have gathered about him in his lifetime
a poetic school. The form of art introduced by the
rhymers of the dolce stile still prevailed in the first half
of the Trecento. Senuccio del Bene (died in 1349), a
Florentine of the party of the Bianchi, who returned in
1326 to live in his native city after an exile of thirteen
years, approached more nearly than Petrarch, his friend
and admirer, to the Tuscans of the preceding century,
seeking, sometimes successfully, to imbue his own work
with their sweetness and purity.

Matteo Frescobaldi (died in 1348) inherited from his
father, Dino, a real predilection for the forms and fig-
ures of poesy consecrated by the example of the two
Guidi and of Dante. Outside of Tuscany, also, the imi-
tations of the stile novo still held the field. The Vene-
tian Giovanni Quirini, who was in poetic correspondence
with Dante, adopted it in his verse; Fazio degli Uberti,
who had lived at the courts of Northern Italy, especially
with the Visconti, and who died at Verona about 1368,
shows the polish of that style in his poems — spirited ex-
pressions of love and grief, making his songs the most
noteworthy of the trecento, after those of Petrarch.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 79

Later, in the second half of the century, the manner
of the singer of Laura began to prevail in the lyrics of
love. The Dantean, nevertheless, continued to exert an
influence, and in the love-verses written in youth by
Cino Rinuccini (died in 1417), a wealthy merchant of
Florence, amid his imitations of Petrarch, which are
judicious and not continuous, is often heard an echo of
the songs and ballads of Dante.

The first real Petrarchian is Bonaccorso da Monte-
magno, of Pistoia; his imitations of famous models of
our greatest lyric poet were admired in the cinqucccnto
and are still valued in some degree; he has but rarely
taken colors from the palette of Dante. This juriscon-
sult, who died in 1429 and was not then old, who taught
in the Studio and went as ambassador from the Floren-
tines to the Duke of Milan, belonged by his life per-
haps rather to the fifteenth century than to the four-
teenth; but by his art he belongs to the latter like Ri-
nuccini, whom he resembles in elegance if not in deli-
cacy. In his time, another element, the classic, pervaded
all forms of art and was welcomed even into amorous
poetry, where amid pagan and mythologic erudition,
every breath of mystic ideality evaporated. He then,
the dolcc stile manner having been cast aside as not
adapted to the changed times, found resource against
the new fashion in the school of Petrarch.

On trie other hand, more than one versifier who lived
almost his entire life in the trecento attached himself
to the traditions of the succeeding one. In Fazio degli
Uberti certain reminiscences of writers of antiquity and
the use, not frequent but noticeable, of mythologic lan-
guage, foreshadowed the quattrocento. A roving gram-
marian, who was old in 1374, Bartolommeo da Castel
della Pieve, introduces the new element in large meas-
ure into his rhymes. Another, who belongs by his art
to the fifteenth century, though born about 1360, is the

80 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Sienese Simone Serdini, called II Saviozzo. A poet sal-
aried by the Guidi and the Malatesta, this singular man,
who died by suicide in the prison where he was confined
by his last lord, the captain Tartaglia da Lavello, wrote
many of his numerous verses at the command of others,
or under the names of imaginary persons; and even in
those where he expresses his own personality, his style
is negligent, his language Latinized. He leads the train
of versifiers of the first half of the fifteenth century, who,
without wholly abandoning the forms of Petrarch, used
in preference the amorous capitolo ternario, which showed
the influence of the triplets of Dante, the canzone morale,
which was the most learned form of lyric poesy, and the
serventese tetrastico or capitolo quadernario, a concession in
lyric art to the popular element.

The masterpiece of Boccaccio had in the trecento imi-
tators more servile than the songs of Petrarch. In 1378,
Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, finding himself through ad-
verse fortune, — in exile, as it appears, — at Doradola,
near Forli, wrote a novel to which he gave the bur-
lesque title of Pecoronc. There are fifty-three stories,
which are supposed to be told, two a day, by a friar and
a nun; and, besides imitating Boccaccio in this whim-
sical setting of the tales, he follows him farther in the
love-ballads that are sung by the narrators. Two of
his stories are taken from the Decameron; the others are
either dry historic narration drawn, and sometimes
merely transcribed, from the chronicle of Giovanni Vil-
lani, or development of one or more subjects from me-
diaeval stories. Simple and clear, but yet colorless, Ser
Giovanni is obviously far behind his model ; and the same
may be said emphatically of Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca,
(1347-1424), who, moreover, being poorly educated,
wrote incorrectly and awkwardly. Nevertheless, this
man, a favorite of the powerful family of the Giunigi
in Lucca, working in the leisure allowed him by the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 81

cares of the public offices in which he acquired riches
and influence, left works much more important for ex-
tent and variety than the Pecorone: a full chronicle of his
city, in which are introduced imaginary didactic tales,
and a collection of one hundred and fifty-five novels,
twenty-one of them from Boccaccio. In poor imitation
of the Decameron, they are supposed to have been told
by a party wandering from one end of the peninsula to
the other to escape the pestilence that broke out in Lucca
in 1374.

Many of Sercambi's tales, developing traditional themes
in forms otherwise unknown, or known only in the
Orient, are aids to the study of comparative litera-
ture of their class ; but in respect of art he is far behind
Franco Sacchetti, who lived from about 1330 to 1400.
He was a Florentine, fond of a life of gayety and leisure,
who in early life was forced into the busy world of
commerce, and later was compelled by domestic straits
to accept the office of podesta from his republic or from
the Lord of Faenza. In 1392, finding himself appointed
podesta at San Miniato, he set himself to write novels,
as he had seen Boccaccio do with such success; but
without using any similar plan for connecting the stories,
he contented himself with simply gathering short tales,
little incidents, anecdotes, heard from his clever fellow-
citizens, or picked up on his travels through other Italian
cities, with the design of giving pleasure to others, and
recreation to himself amid the cares of an uncongenial
office. He took very little from the Decameron. His
work has no elaborated ornament, nor subtlety of art
learned from the antique; it runs quietly and spontane-
ously, as memory suggests, and in the current language
of Florence.

Of the three hundred tales of Sacchetti, two hundred
and twenty-three have come down to us, not all complete.
Almost always, ths incidents are supposed to have taken
0

82 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

place at times not far distant, and sometimes to have
been participated in or witnessed by the author; and
there is a certain connection among them by similarity
of matter or identity of characters. Words of advice ut-
tered at opportune times, ready rejoinders, jokes at times
more knavish than good-humored, subtle turns to ward
off a jest or an insult — these are the subjects Franco
most affects. He brings before us a host of odd types
—or, as he calls them, "new men" — drawn with comic
effect. Among the jesters he gives a special study of
those that make a profession of affability and artfulness,
that is, men of the court, like Messer Dolcibene and Gon-
nella, who receive money or clothing from the nobles
of Italy in payment for their conversation. On the other
hand, his work is quite free from immoral intrigues like
those of the other novelists; he is modest and decorous.
In more than one of his stories he brings in moral ad-
monitions; and in the second half of the Three Hundred
Novels we find not rarely the laudator temporis acti, la-
menting or censuring the present. True, his humor is
not of the finest, and his anecdotes are sometimes in-
sipid; he is deficient in true literary quality, unlike
Boccaccio; he is a clever story-teller, not an artist. But
his book is made attractive by its faithful and lively
representation of the middle-class society of the country.
The company of the "familiar or bourgeois" poets was
distinguished by a special style of poetry not inappro-
priately called bourgeois poetry ; which, not affecting any
subtlety of thought or form, aimed solely to picture
daily life, often humorously and satirically. Its home
was Florence ; and the time most propitious to its flour-
ishing growth was the second half of the century when
art, deprived of its three glorious lights, was lacking
in the nobler forms of ideality. But even before this
time there had been those who kept up the traditions of
the humorists of the thirteenth century, to which the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 83

form of poetry we are speaking of is allied. The verses
of Pieraccio Tedaldi, a Florentine, who died about 1350,
having lived a long time away from his "great and joy-
ous city," are less tasteful and original than those of
Angiolieri, but like them are indications of the bold
recklessness of the Tuscans of that time. Then, we
know that from 1333 verses were written by Antonio
Pucci (died in 1350?), "bell-maker" and afterward pub-
lic crier and "approver" of the commune of Florence,
who is the most remarkable of the poets of this class.
Pucci, a son of the people, wrote for the people — that
is, for that part of the citizens of Florence who were so
called, though not altogether uncultured; his numerous
sonnets, whether humorous, instructive, or satirical, were
eagerly sought for and read. In one group of sonnets
he relates in 'the form of dialogue one of his amorous
adventures, in another explains the rules of verse-writ-
ing. He also treats in poetry and in prose a subject
common in the Middle Ages, the accusation and defense
of women; and, enamored of his Florence, he celebrates
in a chapter in triplets Lc Proprictd, di Mercato Vecchio.
("The Ownership of the Old Market.")

Franco Sacchetti, whose novels have been noticed
above, resembles him in some of his work in verse. In
the "Battle of the Beautiful Women of Florence with
the Old," a curious poem preluding in a way the mock-
heroic poems of the succeeding centuries, he enumerates,
as Pucci also does, the beautiful Florentine women; in
the Caccc, short poems without regular rhythm, narra-
tive intermingled with dialogue, he gives lively scenes
from real life, — a species of chase, according to the title ;
in the Frottole, capricious in measure and in diction, he
jests and instructs in jesting. He wrote lyrics adapted
to music, like the song 0 vaghc montaninc pastorclle ("O
beautiful mountain shepherdesses"), which please by
their idyllic freshness and picturesque description.

84 FRANCESCO FLAMIN1

In this respect Niccolo Soldanieri and Alessio Donati
resemble Sacchetti, the second with the greater boldness
and more frankly popular style. Their ballads, full of
banal jests and animal onomatopeia, as well as certain
poems of Franco himself, have an undeniable kinship
with the rhymes of a painter Orgagna, probably not the
famous artist; but these rhymes — all enigmas, quibbles,
and whimsical conceits — are evident precursors of the
poetic manner that in the succeeding century was called
Alia Burchia ("At Random"). The peculiarity common
to these versifiers is the union of the sententious and
the burlesque. Tedaldi, Pucci and Sacchetti have also
verses on religious and moral subjects; Soldanieri sings
in many serious pieces the usual motifs of gnomic poe-
try; Pietro Faitinelli, called Mugnone (died in 1349),
of Lucca, is both a political and a moral versifier.

Antonio Beccari, of Ferrara (1315-1363?), chief of this
school outside of Tuscany, wrote poems, some religious,
some complaining of the times; among them a Credo in
the character of Dante exculpating himself from the
charge of heresy, which was attributed to Dante him-
self. He was an eccentric man, passionately fond of
play, of travel, of facile amours — non mail z'ir in genii, sed
vagi — ("not bad, but uncertain") as he was characterized
by Petrarch, who corresponded with him. The verses
he has left, varied in subject and form, reflect such a
nature. Then Bindo Bonichi (died in 1338), a merchant
of Siena, honored with important offices in his commu-
nity, belongs among the gnomic poets by the verses in
which he treats of virtue, riches and nobility, striving to
adorn the arid matter with flowers of imagination.

To this small school belong, not to speak of other au-
thors of didactic poems : Cavalca, to whom we shall refer
again, who left sonnets on subjects of morality and re-
ligion, fairly good and quite well known in his time;
Graziolo Bambagluoli, a notary of Bologna, to whom

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 85

we owe a Trattato delle volgari sentence sopra k virtu morali
("Treatise on Popular Ideas of the Moral Virtues"), in
hendecasyllables and septenaria irregularly rhymed; and
Ristoro Canigiani, a Florentine, who has a poem in ter-
cets, Ristorato ("Restored"), from the Fiore di Virtin.

But better worth reading than the feeble and monot-
onous poetry of this class is that which reflects in liter-
ature the songs immortally young of the people. We
know more than one of the themes they loved ; they held
their own in the fourteenth century. In the streets un-
der the windows of beauties, in the squares amid lively
assemblies, in fields smiled upon by the sun, in spring-
time, amid the dances of joyous crowds, these songs re-
sounded to the echo, often set to appropriate music by
skilful composers. The people delighted also in rhymed
stories; public recitations were given with the accom-
paniment of some stringed instrument, of cantari in the
eight-line stanza ; these were for the most part of oriental
origin, translated from the Latin or the French, or epi-
sodes of knightly adventure taken from the Breton ro-
mances. Pucci has left some of these — L'Apollonio di
Tiro, the longest, Madonna Lionessa, Gismirantc, and the
Reina d'Oriente ("Queen of the East"). The two last
mentioned are fantastic tales of the class of fables, and
legendary matter is liberally used in all. Other similar
novels that have come down to us without names may
be the work of Pucci. The author of La Bella Camilla,
a little poem in eight cantos, is known only as Piero,
singer of Siena.

Less attractive to us are the cantari on historic sub-
jects by this same Pucci, La gucrra di Pisa ("The Pisan
War") — and of the Sienese singer on the obsequies
of the Count of Virtu. But for subjects like these
the sirventcse, or sinncntcsc, is well adapted; it was
most popular, whether because the constant beat of
the hendecasyllable upon the same rhyme, followed by

86 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the short clause, suggested the march of soldiery to bat-
tle, or because public events narrated with comments and
warnings in its lines could be easily retained in the mem-
ory by reason of the concatenation of the strophes.

Popular historical poetry flourished most luxuriantly
in the fourteenth century. After the rout of Montecatini,
in 1315, a Tuscan Guelph bewailed the defeat of his
party in a vigorous ballata; the last enterprise and the
death of Can Grande della Scala furnished a subject for
a fine sirvcntese. Buccio and Antonio di Ranallo relate
the deeds of Aquila in a dialect chronicle in Alexandrian
measure, which is rudely effective. The people fell in
love with their history ; and so Pucci at Florence put into
terzets the chronicle of Villani, giving his work the
pompous title of Centiloquio ("The Hundred Songs"), the
number he designed, though he wrote but ninety.

Above all, the defeats, the sudden fall, the death, or
the funeral of the powerful struck the imagination; and
personification and prophecy were the rhetorical devices
preferred by narrators aiming at the greatest effect upon
the audience. Thus from personification adapted to the
mediaeval intellect, originated the great family of the
lamentable tales, which in the form of ballate, or sirven-
tesi, or chronicles or stanzas, were placed in the mouths
of persons or personifications that were to excite pity.
The prophecies, which professed to have been given by
some noted saint or religious before the event to which
they referred, took on a special form of verse ; and among
those cultivating it, two are worth mention — Frate
Stoppa dei Bostichi and Tomasuccio da Foligno (1309-
1377), the latter a Franciscan who with his prophetic
songs aroused the Perugians against the pontifical min-
ister. And finally, political subjects were sometimes
treated in the frottole according to the oldest acceptance
of the word ; that is, foolish tricks of meter akin to those

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 87

of the prophecies. Later, this name was applied to the
barzcllctte, to be spoken of hereafter.

To Francesco di Vannozzo, of Treviso, one of the most
productive writers in the last-mentioned class of com-
position, we owe as well a group of sonnets, in which
he exhorts the Count of Virtu to reunite into a single
body the severed members of Italy. This prince had
pensioned flatterers; and, in general, the political poetry
of the fourteenth century, with the exception of the pop-
ular, was a servile mouthpiece of the will and ambition
of the Italian nobility. Fazio degli Uberti, who wan-
dered from court to court, seems to have been unsteady
in his political ideals; Sacchetti was more constant; re-
flecting the sentiments of the better citizens, he placed
first of all the grandeur of his own city, Florence. But
such poetry is lacking in spontaneity and freshness.
These qualities are to be sought, not only in the popular
lyrics already mentioned, but in the Laudi, full of relig-
ious fervor, of Bianco da Siena, of the Gesuati, an or-
der that was abolished in 1668; in some passages of the
poem on the Passion of Christ, attributed to Niccolo
Cicerchia, and of the Lament of the Virgin by Frate
Enselmino da Montebelluna ; and in more than one of
the knightly poems and romances that preluded in the
fourteenth century the masterpieces of Boiardo and Ari-
osto.

The epic poetry of Italy at this period consists mainly
of material drawn from the French, which superseded
the classic. The people grew familiar with fantastic sto-
ries badly constructed from French originals but satis-
fying curiosity and love of amusement, receiving them
from the lips of strolling minstrels. Charlemagne and
his paladins thus became familiar and interesting char-
acters to our people. Tuscany, where every literary form
in the fourteenth century advanced rapidly toward per-
fection, welcomed eagerly the romance of chivalry. There

88 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the hybrid idiom of Venetian buffoonery gave up the field
to a limpid and pure language ; the ottava rima, or eight-
lined stanza, better adapted to the genius of our lan-
guage, took the place of the monotonous series of lines
on a single rhyme; and the prose, adapted to the narra-
tion of events, was a fitting medium for the literature
of chivalry. The poems on Buovo d'Antona and on Rinaldo
da Montalbano, the Spagna in rhyme and the Spagna in
prose, on the expedition of Charlemagne for the conquest
of the Iberian kingdom, and many other romances, some
woven from traditional material, some inventions founded
in great part or turning on old motifs, held numerous
auditors hours and days intent upon the recitations of
wandering minstrels. If they were in verse, they were
divided into cantari and sung to the accompaniment of
the viol ; in prose, they were usually read.

These romances were of material from other countries,
having no root in the national sentiment. Our national
pride gave rise, among others, to the legend of the Ital-
ian birth of Orlando; but at the same time, the austere
paladins of Charlemagne pleased us in the guise of wan-
dering knights; Charlemagne was so far deprived of his
majesty as to appear almost comic; Rinaldo, the rebel-
lious baron, became the favorite of readers and hearers.
And the struggle of the House of Chiaramonte, to which
this hero belonged, with the House of Maganza, a race
of traitors, acquiring substantial importance in the Italian
version of Carlovingian legends, served to bring that
multiplex material into order according to a definite and
constant design.

Thus were formed vast compilations, and at the close
of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries
there were rough copies for the people of the Reall di
Francia of Andrea da Barberino di Valdelsa, the most fa-
mous of the Florentine authors of his class, which are
still reprinted in our day. They are like an introduction

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 89

to the cycle of Charlemagne, intended to satisfy the cu-
riosity, natural in the people, to knew something of the
origin and the early fortunes of their favorite heroes.
There is told in prose the story, entirely imaginary, of
the royal stock of France before the coronation of
Charles, assigning to it as its founder the Emperor Con-
stantine; the author undertaking to give his work an
erudite tone, so that the people might put faith in its
truth. It is curious to see with what an air of convic-
tion he recounts his fables, how he sets forth the con-
nections, what chronological and geographical exactness
he displays, corroborating his tales with citations ! This
has contributed to the extraordinary circulation, of the
book. Likewise the popularity of the Gucrino il mcschino,
another prose romance by the same minstrel, is dus to
the supernatural in which it abounds. For Guerino in
his great journey as a wandering knight sees strange
countries, monsters stranger yet, gigantic anthropophagi,
the trees of the sun and of the moon and the pit of St.
Patrick; and if any one has seen more he has not made
it known.

The prose, which assumed these varied forms in novels
and in the romances of chivalry during this century, was
constantly improving also in the accounts of historic
events and in the treatises on religious and moral sub-
jects.

The Florentine chronicle of Paolino Fieri, written be-
tween 1302 and 1305, is very dry, holding strictly to
chronological order, in the manner of annals, and is an-
tiquated in language. Quite otherwise was it with Dino
Compagni (i257?-i324), an honest merchant of Florence,
who rose to the first honors in the Republic, but was
retired to private life by the triumph of the Neri in 1301.
In his enforced leisure he prepared and wrote, between
1310 and 1312, a Cronica dcllc cose occorrcnti nc tempi siu)i
("Chronicle of the Events of His Own Time"). He is

90 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

more careful about facts than about dates ; and he groups
his facts according to their nature, trying, not always
successfully, to rise from the chronicle to the history.
Inaccuracies and anachronisms are not lacking in his
short chronicle; but in the important matter, the story
of the division of the Guelphs into Bianchi and Neri,
Whites and Blacks, and of their successive contests, he
gives details unknown to other historians; and he has
memorable sculpturesque passages and effective pictures
of character. Even if he did not speak of himself in the
narrative, as he often does, it would be easy to see that
he had lived and acted amid the tumultuous conflict of
passions which he describes with dramatic vivacity.
Some pages of his chronicle, inspired by sentiments of
rectitude and patriotism, are most eloquent.

A much fuller historical work was written by another
Florentine merchant. He too held the highest office more
than once; he was employed on important commissions,
and traveled on commercial business in France and the
Low Countries. Giovanni Villani (died in 1348), finding
himself in Rome in the jubilee year 1300, seeing "the
grand and ancient sights" of the city, and reading the
occurrences narrated by serious "masters of history,"
conceived the idea of writing a complete history, in the
vernacular, of Florence, the "daughter and creature of
Rome;" and he carried the idea into effect, working at
it all his life, and bringing his narrative from the Tower
of Babel down to the year of his death, 1348. It is like
the mediaeval chronicles, including the events of every
nation, with particular reference to those of Florence.
For the earliest part, biblical and classic legends are
used; then it proceeds in chronological order, without
any study of the relation of the events, and without cit-
ing or considering what others have written of them.
But with the seventh book, after the battle of Monta-
perti, the narrative grows fuller and is based on better

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 91

authority. The latter part of the work also is highly
valuable, for Villani, with impartiality that does honor
to a Guelph of the party of the Neri, referring to things
he himself has seen and heard, not great events only,
but small and minute, offers a picture of the customs,
ideas, and institutions, political and financial, of his age,
which would be sought otherwhere in vain. For this
Chronicle, notwithstanding the awkward arrangement of
the material and the lack of clearness and vigor in the
style, is the most remarkable monument of Italian me-
diaeval historiography. It was continued first by Matteo
Villani, Giovanni's brother, and then by Philip, Matteo's
son, who brought it down to 1364. Several abridgments
of it have been made, and it is a source from which many
later writers have drawn.

There were other records by Florentines, which, group-
ing public events about the adventures of the author and
his family, may be called familiar reminiscences. One
is by Donate Velluti (1313-1370), a Florentine who, ac-
commodating himself to the times and looking for gain,
had the art of living at ease and in honors, and drew
scenes and figures of the domestic life of the time with
candor which makes his work pleasant reading in our
day.

Not all the Tuscan chronicles were written at Flor-
ence. The History of Pistoia narrates with solemnity "all
the persecutions and the pestilences of the city of Pis-
toia and its vicinage for a very long time," that is, from
1300 to 1348. The chronicle of Arezzo, by Ser Gorello,
is not in prose, but in terzets in imitation of Dante. Note-
worthy by the liveliness of the style and the fulness and
variety of the incidents are the stories of travel in the
Holy Land by Fra Niccolo da Poggibonsi, Libre d'Oltrc-
marc, and of three Florentines who traveled there to-
gether— Leonardo Frescobaldi, Simone Sigoldi, and Gior-
gio Gucci.

92 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

But perhaps the fourteenth century owes its character
of the golden age of the language, or the good century,
and the works then written their value as regards lan-
guage, not so much to the prose narratives, if we ex-
cept those of Boccaccio, as to the works written for in-
struction and didactic exhortation.

In the sermons of the beato Giordano da Rivalto
(i26o?-i3ii), simple and unadorned as they are, are found
some traits of that eloquence which comes, not from the
words but from the matter. Another valuable prose
writer is Jacopo Passaranti (died in 1357), a Florentine
Dominican and preacher. In 1354 he put into the form
of a treatise, with the title The Mirror of True Penitence,
sermons that had been given before crowded houses dur-
ing many years; enlivening his arguments with images
and metaphors, and incidents related with a wealth of
picturesque detail, representing vividly the fire of hu-
man passion in its inception and course, he has given
us a book, unfortunately incomplete, which in the vigor
of the style and the native clearness of its eloquence ri-
vals the Decameron. Similar praise may be given to Do-
menico Cavalco da Vico of Pisa (died in 1342), also a
Dominican, who wrote of mortality and religion in sev-
eral treatises, and among other works on asceticism made
a free translation into the vernacular of the Vite dei Santi
Padri, a vast ancient hagiography, showing the wonder-
ful power of faith in the early ages of Christianity. Al-
though more concerned "to speak usefully than to speak
beautifully," Cavalco, by the sincerity of his sentiments,
•warm with fervid love, produces prose that is limpid,
graceful, and full of natural power. He is not an orig-
inal writer, since the doctrines he expounds are taken
from the fathers and doctors; but his fecundity and the
criticisms on the customs of the time that he gives in
the greatest part of his works render him one of the
most prized of the authors of the trecento.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 93

The aphoristic and ascetic letters of the beato Gio-
vanni Colombini of Siena, called by his biographer, Bel-
cari, "fervid and most sweet epistles," should not be
passed over; nor those of St. Catherine Benincasa, also
of Siena (1347-1380). She left three hundred and sev-
enty-three, addressed to all sorts of persons, from kings
and popes to artisans and low women. This wonder-
ful woman, who, a daughter of the people, could heal dis-
sensions— not private dissensions alone — in the name of
Christ, could admonish clerics and princes, and say what
she thought to every one, without ambiguity, though
almost uncultured, has left pages of real eloquence. Her
language, it is true, is too fanciful, and her lively imagi-
nation has led her to use metaphors, which, referring to
things purely spiritual, are peculiarly unseemly, as, for
example, "the spotless Lamb roasted at the fire of divine
love," and "sins vomited by means of confession"; but
the heart has been her incomparable teacher, whence
she expresses herself for the most part with clearness and
with vigor. In the ascetics of the trecento, sincere piety
atones for the defects of art. Admirable for clearness
and purity are The Little Flowers of St. Francis, trans-
lated from a collection in Latin of the acts and words of
the Saint of Assisi.

Compilations of this kind on subjects moral, scientific
and historical, are in general distinguished by purity and
effective simplicity of diction. By reason of this excel-
lence, if not of judicious arrangement of material, the
Teachings of the Ancients, by Fra Bartolommeo da
S. Concordio (died in 1347), may be read with profit.
The author was a learned Dominican who gathered un-
der this title ethical precepts from the Bible, from theo-
logians and from profane writings, classic and mediaeval.
The same may be said of the Flowers of Italy, by Fra
Guido da Pisa, a Carmelite, recounting for the instruc-
tion of the unlearned "memorable deeds and sayings of

94 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the ancients, particularly of the Romans." In the second
book, many times published separately, The Deeds of
&neas is a compend of the Virgilian story in harmonious
periods and charming style. A characteristic example of
this class is the Fiorita ("Wreaths of Flowers"), com-
piled in 1325 by a magistrate of Bologna, Armannino—
a work in prose and verse, giving in great numbers
stories and legends from the creation of the world to
the time of Julius Caesar.

The versions made in the fourteenth century of Vir-
gil's JEneid, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, Heroidi, and other
of his works, as well as of some histories — Sallust had
an able and vigorous translator in Bartolommeo da S.
Concordio — show by the confusions, distortions and mis-
takes of which they are full, how slight was the knowl-
edge of classic Latin at that time.

But some choice spirits even in that century gave
themselves with ardor to the study of the ancient world.
These first humanists only followed the traditions of the
Middle Ages, with new vigor of imagination; but yet,
without such changes of standards, the revival in let-
ters, arts and political theory could not have been so
complete in the fifteenth century ; the classic Renaissance
of the fifteenth had its inception in the fourteenth cen-
tury. Its greatest precursors were the three supreme
Tuscans, and Florence was its cradle. Dante drew from
the Middle Ages not only its own ideas, which he in-
carnated, but the sentiment as well of love for the Ro-
mans and reverence for their ancient civilization. In
Petrarch classic culture appears more extended and pro-
found than in most of his predecessors. He and Boc-
caccio are famous for their searches through monastic
libraries for Latin and Greek manuscripts, and for the
aid they gave to the Calabrian Leonzio Pilato, one of
the earliest masters of Greek letters in Italy. The study
of these three authors gave the impulse to the scholars

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 95

of the circle of Coluccio Salutati, the first of the real
humanists.

Salutati (1331-1406), born at Stignano in the valley of
the Nievole, was one of those notaries that alternate legal
formulae with hexameters or distichs, and delight in sup-
plementing the statute-books lying open upon their desks
with laws of conduct drawn from the ALncid or the Com-
nicdia. He was to be crowned poet laureate, but died
before receiving the honor, and the crown was placed
upon his tomb; but his fame was especially due to his
fervent advocacy of classic studies, in which he followed
the work of Petrarch, of whom he was a cordial admirer.
His Latin letters, some of them so long as to be disser-
tations, written to Italian and foreign students of the
classics, made his name an authority everywhere. He dis-
covered ancient texts which he corrected and interpreted
with great skill while attending to the important duties
of Chancelor of the Florentine Republic, and improving
the chanceloresque style in his official letters by join-
ing eloquence to the details of political affairs.

About him were gathered, in the latter part of the tre-
cento, the most conspicuous representatives of Floren-
tine culture. They were accustomed to assemble in the
villa of a merchant-poet, Antonio degli Alberti. There,
while the dancing and chatter of young men and maidens
were going on about them, the more learned talked of
Livy and of St. Augustine, oftener of Boccaccio and Pe-
trarch; they spoke of restoring to honor the language of
Latium, but thought also of the glory of that of Dante.
Giovanni Gherardi da Prato was a public lecturer on
his works, and an imitator in certain of his poems. He
described this assembly in a curious and learned ro-
mance, 77 paradiso degli Alberti. Yet the ardor for classic
study did not too readily suffer the works of the great
Tuscan to usurp precious time; to scholars accustomed
to enjoy Livy, Cicero and Tacitus, Alighieri's Latin too

96 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

often savored of scholastic barbarism, and Petrarch's
seemed cold and colorless. This explains the singular
fact that Niccoli, head of the new company of scholars,
who had imbibed a love for literary studies from the
reading of Dante and knew the whole Commedia by heart,
said, or could be supposed to say, later that Dante was
a poet for shoemakers and his book fit "to be given to
the apothecaries to make powders."

The superstitious representatives of the old Florentine
school, like Cino Rinuccini, arose, for love of country as
well, against these depreciators of its glories. But as
the idea of universal Roman empire prevailed among cul-
tured people over that of nationality, as a result of the
revival of classic memories, so the Latin admired and
studied by the learned of the entire world seemed far
preferable to the vernacular. Florence even, where with
the decline of the trecento came the decline of the litera-
ture that, by virtue of the great triumvirate, had from
Florentine become Italian, was invaded by classic eru-
dition, intolerant and tyrannical. In the convent of San
Spirito the Augustinian Luigi Marsili gathered around
him famous students of the humanities; in the public
Studio Giovanni Malpaghini of Ravenna, a disciple of
Petrarch, educated young men in the revived Latin elo-
quence ; and the Greek Manuele Crisolora began in 1397
the methodical teaching of his own language.

From Florence the cultivation of the humanities spread
through Northern Italy, especially in Venetia, where
the ground was singularly adapted to it. There, even
from the first decade of the fourteenth century, human-
ism had had notable precursors in Mussato and Ferreto.
Albertino Mussato (1261-1329), a Paduan notary who
served his city with brain and sword and was cere-
moniously crowned as a poet, wrote a Latin poem worthy
of praise, considering its date. For his historic works
he took Livy and Sallust as models. In a poem in hex-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 97

ameters concerning the siege of Padua by Can Grande
in 1320, he followed Virgil ; in his minor poems he copied
Ovid; and finally, in the Eccrinis he gave a servile imita-
tion of the tragedies of Seneca. The Eccrinis ("Ezze-
liniad") upon the deeds of Eccelin da Romano and of
his family, is patriotic in purpose; under its classic garb
it is a Christian tragedy in Latin — if, indeed, it can be
called a tragedy, and not rather an epic drama or a dra-
matic epic, from the fact that the author, giving it a
title of epopca, designed it, not for recitation but for read-
ing, and that the action covers half a century, from 1210
to 1260, with continual changes of scene. Ferreto Fer-
reti, of Vicenza, who died in 1337, though of loss im-
portance than Mussato, is worthy of mention, because,
in his seven books, the last incomplete, of the history
of Italy and especially of Vicenza and of Padua, from the
death of Frederick II to 1318, he preludes, by the art
with which he sets forth his facts and by the polish of
his style, the greater historians of the Renaissance.

the first half of the fifteenth century Italian
scholars attempted to make a minute investiga-
tion of classic antiquity, and Tuscany came to
be the center of these researches. Poggio Brac-
ciolini of Terranova in the Valdarno (1380-1459), pursu-
ing with ardor the work begun in the preceding century,
found at St. Gall and in the convents of Cluny and of
Langres a copy entire of Quintilian, a part of the Argo-
nautica of Valerius Flaccus, the Silra? of Statius, the
Punica of Silius Italicus, and ten orations of Cicero,
7

98 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

which, joined to the rhetorical writings in more com-
plete and original form unearthed by Gerardo Landriani,
Bishop of Lodi, made a considerable addition to the
known work of the great orator. Poggio Bracciolini,
vain and quarrelsome, but learned and laborious, gath-
ered and incited others to gather small but valuable
remnants and fragments, before unknown, of Roman
literature, during his long sojourn at Rome, where he
was apostolic secretary, and at Florence, where he held
the office of Chancelor of the Republic in his later years.
In Florence, opulent and at this time more peaceful than
in earlier years, the traditions of Salutati were continued
with a better method by Niccolo Niccoli, Leonardo
Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and Palla Strozzi. Nic-
coli, most ardent apostle of humanism, gathered in his
house a rich library and a museum for use in classic
studies, and made them free to his friends. Bruni, bet-
ter known by the name Leonardo Aretino, spent his life
from 1370 to 1444, in these studies and wrote numerous
works, gained fame and power, and, like Poggio later,
held the office of Chancelor. Traversari, a Roman but
fourteen years old when he came to Florence, where he
entered the convent of the Angeli and became general of
the Camaldolesi, united humanistic philosophy with sa-
cred erudition. Palla Strozzi was one of the most per-
fect of gentlemen and one of the ablest promoters of hu-
manism; through his means the Studio in Florence,
which had been declining, was restored to a flourishing
condition.

However, the Studio was not at this time and after-
ward the hearth-fire of culture in the city; the Medici
were the soul of it; the protection of art and letters was
of necessity an essential element in establishing their
power, still in its beginning. And, in fact, Cosimo the
Elder, with the aid of that celebrated Vespasiano da
Bisticci, the librarian — to whom we owe a series in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 99

Italian of the Lives of Illustrious Men of the Fifteenth Cen-
tury, very able and valuable — gathered manuscripts in
great numbers and redeemed from creditors those that
Niccoli had collected with so great expense. So, while
throughout Italy the ardor of research was continued,
and many lived by the labor of hunting, selling and
transcribing texts, the principal book-market for buyers
and amanuenses was at Florence. There copies, often
unique, of the writings of Greece and Latium passed at
a bound from cloistered cells, and from garrets where
they were the food of the moth, into the hands of those
to whom they meant a livelihood.

The unlimited admiration for the old literature favored
the claim of the humanists that they were the only
competent critics, and that the dispensing of glory or in-
famy was wholly in their hands. Hence the production
of originals in Latin all adulation and invective, and mix-
tures of the arrogance of the charlatan with the baseness
of the courtier, on the part of the majority of those who,
not content with studying the classics, used them as the
medium for carrying on their rivalries. Francesco Filel-
fo of Tolentino (1398-1481), a voluminous writer, was
of this number. Among his long-winded works, ten
books, according to the original scheme, were to have
comprehended the Commcntationcs Florentine? de e.vilio,
written by him in hatred of the Medici; his "Satires"
are divided into ten books, ten satires in each, one hun-
dred lines in a satire; hence he called them hecatostichc ;
his collection of epigrams, De jocis ct scriis, is in ten
thousand lines. In all these writings Filelfo lives again
as he was — vain, petulant, abusive. He did not hesitate
to place himself above Virgil and Cicero, because, hav-
ing learned Greek well in Crisolara's school and in con-
versation with his wife, Crisolara's daughter, he regarded
himself as the true and unique representative of Hel-
lenic culture. And what contumely in his verses! Pier

100 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Candido Decembrio, who stood first among the scholars
at the court of Filippo Maria Visconti, by his versatile
genius and his multiplex activity, was assailed in the
language of the slums by the jealous Filelfo, who had
found profit and honor with the Visconti after being
banished from Florence for his presumption.

For the rest, it was a necessity for literati by profes-
sion to flatter princes, to depreciate rivals, to acquire
lucre. Filelfo was allowed to stay at Florence, at Siena,
and at Milan, where he took up his residence successive-
ly ; but for other humanists, not so prized and feared, life
was a continual pilgrimage from one city to another,
from one office to another. Necessity or innate restless-
ness forced Giovan Mario Filelfo to go roving through
Italy; he was the eldest son of Francesco, and inherited
the bad rather than the good paternal qualities. Gas-
parino Barzizza, later Professor of Eloquence at the
Studio of Pavia, was obliged by the straits in which he
found himself with his numerous family to teach the
rudiments of Latin to boys.

Vittorino de Rambaldoni, of Feltre (1378-1446), most
famous of educators, lived among boys, but by his own
free choice. He was a friend and disciple of that Guarino
of Verona who led a whole generation of enthusiastic
scholars to the study of humane letters in Ferrara, to-
gether with Prince Leonello d'Este. In 1423 he was
called to Mantua as tutor of the Gonzaga; and in that
city he carried into effect the idea he had cherished of a
college where, besides a strict education, instruction
might be imparted in literature and science, founded
upon the study of the ancients, due regard being given
to the principles of good conduct. His school sent out
able men, who gave a healthy impulse to Italian culture.
Classic studies were also made a part of the education
of women in the fifteenth century. There were learned
women, authors of praiseworthy orations and Latin

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 101

epistles — Isolta Nogarola, Costanza Varona, Cassandra
Fedele; princes favored studies of antiquity; and the
Church aided the work of the humanists in every way;
not only renowned prelates, but the pontiffs themselves
cooperated to spread the new culture. For the scholars
of the Curia, who had already lived joyously and well
remunerated under Martin V and Eugenio IV, a day of
rejoicing came with the elevation to the papacy, first of
Tommaso Parentuccelli of Sarzana, as Nicholas V, a
learned bibliophile, munificent in forming libraries as
well as famous for the splendid buildings he erected in
Rome; and again, after a brief interval, of .ffineas Sil-
vius Piccolomini of Corsignano — now Pienza, from the
name he assumed on his elevation to the pontificate. This
was Pope Pius II, a true humanist, who as a young
man had effused his gay humor in poor verse, in come-
dies, and in a licentious Story of Two Lovers. Having
been made Pope, he renounced his past sins, but cher-
ished in his heart the predilections of the former time.
He was less warm and pronounced in his advocacy of
the humanities than Nicholas V had been, because he
held the interests of religion above everything else; but
to advance these he made use of the eloquence learned
from the classics. His autobiography, Commentarii Rerutn
Meniorabilium, is written in fluent Latin, with vivid de-
scription and acute observation, and breathes the vigor-
ous and fructifying spirit of the new time.

So the revival of learning entered with the quattro-
cento, giving new energy to all our intellectual life.
Then the quick capabilities of the Italians, loosed from
the bonds of metaphysical speculation, turned to the
study of the world in its multiplex reality ; and antiquity
was the guide in the transition. Hence the pictures of
paesaggio by Pius II; the sublime description of the
Falls of the Rhine and of the baths of Baden, which
Poggio has left us in Latin as powerful as it is limpid ;

102 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the profound feeling for nature which is seen in Alberti,
in Magnifico, and in others of the time. The school
worked its own purificaton; criticism, strengthened by
a conception of the ancient world, no longer distorted
and confused, drove from its throne the principle of au-
thority.

Criticism is the new spirit of the Renaissance, and it
proceeds from erudition. Without the humble company
of scholars whom we have seen intent on discovering
and arranging the remains of antiquity, the career of the
most ardent student of the Renaissance and the most
original thinker of the century would not have been pos-
sible. This was Lorenzo della Valle, called II Valla
(1405-1457), born in Rome of a family of Piacenza. Of
active genius and combative temper, he displayed in dis-
cussion breadth of ideas and independence of judgment,
and made war upon tradition in eloquence, in philosophy,
in theology, and in jurisprudence, all with equal ardor
if not with equal success. To his skilful use of the com-
parative method, by which he applied the full and varied
stores of his learning to a special question, was due the
fame of his work on the Donation of Constantine, a
subject treated with less effect by other writers. As is
natural, the spirit of independence sometimes led him,
especially in youth, to maintain opinions involving para-
doxes; but the judgments pronounced with juvenile im-
petuosity were afterward moderated. For example, in
the question of preeminence between Cicero and Quin-
tilian, on which he wrote a pamphlet when he was
twenty years old, having gone too far, from a desire to
discourage the too exclusive adoration of Cicero, he later
modified his opinion and gave a more temperate judg-
ment. Again, in the dialogue DC Voluptate (1431), at-
tacking the historical and philosophic theories of the
commentators on Aristotle, he went too far in criticism
of the master, and as if for love of opposition, expatiated

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 103

on the ethical theories of the Epicureans ; but afterward
he showed that there might be one opinion of Aristotle
distorted by the commentators, and another of the genu-
ine Aristotle; and also that the desire to vindicate the
fame of Epicurus was joined to lively disapproval of the
exaggerations of his followers.

For the rest, Valla was not a true philosopher; indeed,
he held the philosophers in slight esteem. For solving
metaphysical problems he took his stand upon the New
Testament, seeking to restore its genuine readings. He
destroyed without re-building ; he prided himself on hav-
ing discredited the wisdom of antiquity. He had bitter
disputes with Poggio, Panormita and Bartolommeo
Fazio, which, however, were not excessively bitter for
the temper and practice of the time. This mania for as-
sailing everything, even the most firmly rooted opinions
and the most venerated idols, gave him the reputation
of a. bilious cynic. But it arose from love of truth and
an unbridled desire for novelty. With such a disposi-
tion, it is not strange that the name of Valla, a thinker
more than a writer, is not associated with any artistic
work. His Latin versions of .ffisop, Herodotus, and
Thucydides are inelegant and not wholly faithful; that
of the Iliad was incomplete ; Latin poetry, the delight of
his colleagues, he cultivated with negligent haste. His
true vocation was criticism, and there he holds a high
place, especially in philological criticism; for philology
acts as a light to metaphysics and an aid to dialectics.
Before him, Latin writers had depended upon the ear,
forming their style by dint of assiduous reading of the
classic authors rather than by analytic study. Valla, on
the contrary, was subtly skilful in drawing the principles
of eloquence from the classics, though not in practising
them himself. He was the founder, and the champion,
against the opposition of Poggio, of a new school, which
may be called scientific. He opened the way long af-

104 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

terward followed with great success in Germany. In the
Elegantia Lingua: Latino:, his principal work, he put new
blood into the language, clearing it from the barbarisms
of the schools, with a more varied, free, and intelligent
imitation of the classics.

Furthermore, modern historical criticism recognizes in
Valla one of its precursors ; he scorned legends, and tore
the laurels from heroes of romance whose names had
been held sacred. The solemn and pompous majesty of
Livy's history was the supreme ideal of the humanist
historians ; to it Bruni and Poggio, both writing in Latin
the history of Florence, sacrificed exactness of detail and
color of place and time. Valla, on the contrary, made
his History of Ferdinand I lively and picturesque, full
of anecdote and true in drawing, not troubling himself
about "historic dignity."

The same may be said of the Decades of Flavio Biondo
of Forli (1388-1463), which gives the history of the
period extending from the time of Arcadius and Hono-
rius to the battle of Anghiari in 1440. In this the author
anticipates the modern method of treating the sources
of history, and aims at precision and clearness rather
than rhetorical Latinity.

The same tendency to realism is shown in the Com-
mentaries of Pius II ; he describes usages, customs, insti-
tutions, and all the impressions of places and events in
a manner to bring them vividly before the reader.

As a practical result of this method, antiquarian study
was raised to the dignity of a science, supplementing the
knowledge of the Roman world and throwing light for
the first time on the world of Greece. L'ltalia Illustrate,,
Roma Instaurata, and Roma Tviumphans, by Biondo, treat
of antiquities of public and private life with rich abun-
dance of direct observation and of citation. Ciriaco dei
Pizzicolli of Ancona (1391-1455), a merchant who, fas-
cinated by the ancient monuments seen on his travels,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 105

put aside his ledger, and went in search of cameos, sculp-
tures and inscriptions in Latin, Greek and Egyptian, may
be said to have been a forerunner in the modern science
of epigraphy.

As for the knowledge of Greek writers, it spread slow-
ly in Italy, but without interruption. At first the Greek
scholars that came to seek fortune among us, like Gior-
gio da Trebisonda and Teodoro Gaza, had to overcome
serious obstacles. Before Hellenic culture could find
acceptance with the admirers of the Latin, it was neces-
sary that those not well acquainted with the Greek lan-
guage should get some taste of the masterpieces of
Homer, Demosthenes, Plato and Xenophon. This was
furnished by translators, the greatest of whom was
Bruni. He, among other works, gave a more faithful
rendering of Aristotle than the distorted versions pre-
viously made; and Pope Nicholas V arranged for a
series of translations of Greek classics, according to one
of his great and well-considered designs. By these
means Hellenism flourished in Italy in the second half
of the century, after the simitar of Mahomet II, in
1453, had cut off the languid life of the feeble Byzantine
Empire. Then three most learned Grecians of Byzan-
tium took refuge among us and lectured from our aca-
demic chairs — Demetrio Calcondila, Constantino Lasca-
ris, and Giovanni Argiropulo.

The spirit of observation, fruit of the Renaissance,
which we have seen exercised by scholars concerning
nature and man, when it turned back to the analysis of
those very great works of antiquity whence it emanated,
gave rise to the cultivation of the labored style artificial-
ly formed on the classic models. And in the end the
form so prevailed over the thought as to make us mas-
ters of style for Europe, but at the same time to take
from us the glory of original and fecund conceptions,
which Dante had gained for us among the nations. Al-

106 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

ready in the Latin works of Petrarch poverty of ideas
was visible under the disguise of sonorous periods. In
the Latin compositions of the fifteenth century, thought
and sentiment stagnated together in the "deadly ditch"
of rhetorical eloquence; even with the best, Pius II, the
diction took precedence of the matter. So the numerous
philippics of the humanists, often violent, are only a
sort of intellectual exercise; the epistles that, in imita-
tion of Cicero and Petrarch, they were accustomed to
gather, arrange in books and publish, seldom, like Pog-
gio's, bear the impress of individuality. In fine, in their
treatises, whatever may be the subject of discussion,
these scholars make it their chief aim to give us beau-
tiful pages of Latin prose, taking their material from
antiquity without regard to the changes of the times.

The Latin lyrics of this period also owe their inspira-
tion and their form to the classics, but not always their
sentiments, which often seem modern and vivid, nor al-
ways their material, which usually is drawn from fugi-
tive impressions or constant conditions of real life. The
lima labor, wherein lies the secret of the perfection of
the songs written in Italy at a later period, did not enter
into the work of Gianantonio Campano of Cavetli near
Capua, poet of the court of Pius II, who wrote in the
middle of the century and preferred to improvise ac-
cording to his mood. He has the merit of having ex-
pressed himself freely in the distich and the ode ; an Ovid-
ian fervor of passion breathes through his amorous ju-
venile poetry. A little later Tito Vespasiano Strozzi of
Ferrara married natural spontaneity to the patient mas-
tery of style and verse. The same union appears more
strikingly in the greatest lyric Latin poet of the fifteenth
century, Pontano.

Giovanni Pontano, who changed his first name to the
classic Jovianus (1426-1503), was born at Cerreto in Um-
bria; but soon after he was twenty he entered the ser-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 107

vice of Alfonso of Aragon and became by adoption a
Neapolitan. In Naples he succeeded Antonio Beccadelli
called Panormita, as head of the Academy, which was
then called from his name Pontaniana. He rose «to high
political office in Naples and at last to the highest, that
of Secretary of State, which he held for ten years. The
charm of the Parthenopean bay, the voluptuous softness
of nature no less than of life in that city, had a potent
influence over him, so that in life and in art he was dom-
inated by sense rather than by sentiment. Reading his
Amorcs, his Lepidina, an exquisite mythological idyl in
hexameters, and his Hcndecasyllabi, the shores of Pozzuoli
and Baia glow divinely beautiful to the eye of the imag-
ination, shining in the sun peopled with the most al-
luring deities of Olympus. The tempered Epicureanism
of the author is displayed in joyous and serene imagin-
ings, in pictures lighted by sensuous love; especially
abounding in these is the Eridani, where the scene is
shifted to the bank of the Po. But, since Pontano re-
flects in his verses only the fantasies of the Greeks and
the Romans, with the superficial sentiment of a bour-
geois Italian of the fifteenth century, they please, but do
not speak to the heart. He attains to the true height
of poetry only in the three most original books in elegiac
meter — DC Amore coningali where he sings of domestic
events with intensity of affection. The group of twelve
Nama (elegies), dedicated to his own son, is a jewel.

The greatest merit of Pontano consists in his admir-
able control of the language and versification in Latin.
In his philosophic treatises in the DC bcllo ncapolitano,
in the dialogues where the academic society of Naples
with its ideas and usages lives again, the style is varied
and flexible, without a shadow of pedantry. Pontano
has pages of prose and verse of caressing blandishment;
he is a contrast to Valla, against whom many times he
pointed his arrows; the one was critical, the other enr

108 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

thusiastic by nature. But both critical and enthusiastic
had to be the perfect humanist according to the Italian
type cherished to this day. And such was Angelo Poli-
ziano, a writer who, in learning and in art, in Latin wri-
ting and Italian poetry, towered above all others in the
quattrocento.

Angelo Ambrogini, called Poliziano from the name
of his native Montepulciano (Mons Politianus), (1454-
1494), when only ten years old lost his father, Messer
Benedetto, who fell a victim to one of those ferocious
vendettas that are handed down from father to son. So
the boy passed his youth in poverty with a kinsman in
Florence. Precocious and devoted to study, he listened
to an exposition of the Aristotelian doctrines by Argiro-
pulo when he was fifteen years old. But nature and
youth, as he said, drew him to Homer; and the boy at-
tempted an undertaking that for nearly a century had
been the desire and despair of the most learned — a ver-
sion of the Iliad. The celebrated Carlo Marsuppini had
translated the first book by order of Nicholas V, and
Politian began at the second. He offered his work to the
first citizen of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici, a young
man already surrounded with artistic and literary splen-
dor. Lorenzo called to his side "the Homeric boy" ; and
so Angelo at sixteen passed from his poor dwelling be-
yond the Arno to the Medicean palace on Via Larga,
where he could have leisure to continue his translation
and prepare himself to fill worthily the chair at the Flor-
entine Studio, which was assigned to him not many years
later. He was a most learned and genial master, encour-
aging the young men to unite art with philological sci-
ence, solid culture with the education of sentiment and
taste — a union which is his own glory and the peculiar
characteristic of his work. For Poliziano, while he stud-
ied ancient codes and — in this an heir of Valla — anti-
cipated the course of modern philology, had at the same

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 109

time assimilated the vital sap of classicism as no other
before him had done. He wrote exquisite elegies in
Latin, epigrams witty and elegant, where the sponta-
neity of the emotion, united to the perfection of the form,
pleases us even in the frivolity of the poetry of occasion.
Among his famous elegies are that on the violet and
that on the death of Albiera degli Albizzi. In the epi-
grams in Greek the pupil of Argiropulo gathers the first
fruits of revived Hellenism.

Amid such ardor of study concerning the classic world,
it is natural that Italian literature should be cultivated
less than before. In the first half of the fifteenth cen-
tury the language in which Dante and Petrarch had
astonished Europe lay neglected; the learned, under the
delusion that they could restore the Latin to be used
exclusively in literature, regarded the Italian, not as
a legitimate heir of the Latin, but an ignoble dialect co-
existing with it from remote ages.

But Italian poetry was not altogether abandoned by
people of indifferent culture; at Florence especially was
this the case, where the people were accustomed to
gather in crowds upon the piazza of San Martino near
Or San Michele, to listen to minstrels and improvisatori,
while the supreme magistrates, obliged to stay in the
palace, were entertained at table with poetry recited by
way of amusement and instruction, or in praise of foreign
guests, by an official deputed to this office — the knight
herald of the Signoria.

From these professional rhymers, and from others
who, amid their daily occupations in the law-courts, in
the dwelling of the signori, in shops, strung together
verses as best they could, a copious and varied poetic
mass is left to be gathered from parchments adorned
with colored initials, from collections where the industry
of contemporaries had made selections of them, and even
from the modest note-books of notaries and artisans.

110 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

One of these was printed — the rhymes written in compe-
tition which Leon Battista Alberti and Piero di Cosimo
de' Medici instituted in 1441 in Santa Maria del Fiore
with the praiseworthy intention of experimenting on
the adaptation of the native idiom, now neglected and
become barbarous, to the development of a theme already
treated masterfully by the ancients. In the contest (cer-
tame coronario) upon friendship citizens of various classes
voluntarily took part. The prize, a silvered crown in
the form of a laurel wreath, from the Apostolic secreta-
ries, adorers of the Latin, was assigned to no one, not
even to Leonardo Dati, future Bishop of Massa, and
then an official of the Curia, who said in Italian, in the
measures of Virgil and Horace, the same things that
they had said in Latin concerning friendship, the same
that he had used in his verse concerning other subjects.
Yet these rhymes display a richness of form, a mixture
of conflicting impulses, the uncertainty of experiments —
indicative, in short, of something maturing and almost
fermenting in the shadow, whence were to come new
masterpieces as soon as the kindling torch of humanis-
tic culture should be applied.

Naturally the classic element prevails in all the poetic
productions in Italian during this formative period. To
what excess the idea was carried, that exalted person-
ages or colleagues in art should be addressed in solemn
Latin style, is shown by the poetic correspondence of
Feo Belcari, most celebrated litterateur among the clients
of Cosimo the Elder, with his friends and admirers,
which is bristling with Latinisms and forced circumlo-
cutions of eloquence. But, though the classic element
in lyric poetry gave place to an inappropriate display of
historical and mythological learning, it was cultivated
among the many by versifiers not altogether beneath
notice. Giusto de' Conti, of Valmontone near Rome,
has been much admired; his canzoniere, La bclla inana,.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE HI

made up of imitations, pure and simple, of Petrarch, is
the most copious and least inelegant of that time.

But inspiration was in general lacking in the poetry,
Tuscan or other, before the time of the Magnificent. It
is the work of versifiers who contented themselves with
repeating the conceits and phrases of Petrarch, or of
poets by trade who, without vocation and without ar-
tistic ideality, made rhymes merely as a source of profit.
Further, the lack of rules, the neglect of our own lan-
guage, and, more than all, the mania that the arrogance
of the humanist poets excited in our writers of verse to
show that they too were learned — all tended to intro-
duce inversions foreign to the nature of our language,
ellipses in profusion, solecisms, sentences badly con-
structed. The history of letters cannot pass this over;
for these lyrics form links in the chain that joins the
earlier and later developments of this class of poetry.
For example, the capitolo in terza rima, which was used
in the sixteenth century for satire and burlesque, served
in the fifteenth, as we have seen, for amorous and gnomic
poetry; and the awkward forms into which it fell in the
hands of the writers of love-poems, at the close of the
fifteenth century and the opening years of the sixteenth,
may have suggested to Berni the idea of adopting it in.
jocose lyric; while the origin of sixteenth century sat-
ire may be traced to the didactic-satiric in terza rima
of the same period. The serious and facetious popular
or semi-popular poetry of the time is more attractive
and better.

In the fifteenth century the old popular Florentine
style of poetry was followed by Burchiello, who revived
the manner of Orgagna, and by Francesco d'Altobianco
degli Alberti, who affected that of Pucci. Alberti has
left many sonnets — gnomic, satiric, and jocose, as well
as political. Burchiello — that is, Domenico di Giovanni,
called Burchiello — a barber of Florence (1404-1449), at-

112 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tained to fame, not so much by the rhymes in which he
sang the motifs of burlesque poetry, or by certain fine
political sonnets, or the many derisive ones, obscure now,
but clear and enjoyable to his contemporaries, as by the
speech, alia burchia, used by him in more than one com-
position— whimsical, extravagant, incomprehensible to
students of correct language. [Alia burchia means "at
random;" burchio is a bark, and burchiello a little bark.]
We like the verses that this poor, petulant, and fantastic
son of labor made amid the straits of poverty, the mis-
fortunes of exile, and the discomforts of prison where
for slight cause he languished for months. They bring
the merry and gossiping populace of Florence living be-
fore our eyes. Then there are ballatc full of fresh gayety,
written by Francesco Alberti and others, bringing be-
fore the imagination the gilded youth who sang them
to maidens of Florence; and certain lauds most emo-
tional and sweet, amid the infinite number that have
come down to us, carrying us in thought into the midst
of the pious congregations of the artisans of that day.
Both ballate and lauds were forms that deserved to be
artistically treated later by Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Throughout Italy, not alone in Florence and in Tus-
cany, the people, left to themselves, held their har-
monious language without further capricious innova-
tions. The lyric poetry is all of sentiment, full of color
and spontaneous, at times warm with passion, at times
cynical or jocose. The people had a poet of their own,
an artist, who perfectly understood their spirit. Choos-
ing subjects long familiar and congenial to them, he
wrote and set to music lays and songs that ran tri-
umphant through the peninsula. This was a Venetian
of the high nobility, of political importance, a learned
translator of Plutarch and a disciple of Guarino of Ve-
rona— Leonardo Giustinian (i388?-i446). He proved
that in one person might coexist the learning of the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE

humanists and the sentiment of the people — coexist
separately — each in distinct operation ; but already a step
was taken upon the way to fusion of the classic with
the popular elements of art. To Giustinian belong the
first honors of vernacular literature during the period
that may be called preparatory of Italian humanism.

And now we come to the second period, when the.
fruits of the labors of research and illustration began to
be gathered, and poets educated in the school of Virgil
and Horace appropriated from classicism not alone the
raw material but the exquisite art. The union of this
with the living spirit of our people was complete, and it
gave to our literature a national character. It was ef-
fected in Florence, a new Athens, by the patronage of
Lorenzo de' Medici, emulous of the magnificence of
Pericles. The verses in Italian, by his client and friend
Politian, are classically elaborated and yet freshly fra-
grant.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, literature and
art shone with most brilliant luster in Florence. At the
end of 1439, on the occasion of the transfer of the Coun-
cil from Ferrara, which aimed to heal the dissensions be-
tween the Greek and Latin churches, two Greeks who
had come there in the train of their Emperor brought
and diffused a better understanding of the Platonic and
Neo-Platonic doctrines. They were Giorgio Gemisto
Pletone, then more than eighty years of age, and Bessa-
rione, his disciple, soon afterward made Archbishop of
Nicea. They had reconciled the disputes long carried
on among the Greeks settled in Italy by the partisans
of Plato and those of Aristotle, and had contributed to
a better understanding of other ancient philosophic sys-
tems. In conversation with Gemisto, a curious type of
visionary who assumed the role of religious reformer,
and in whom his disciples imagined they saw the trans-
migrated soul of Plato, Cosimo the Elder conceived the

114 FRANCESCO FLAM1NI

idea of reviving the Academy of Plato in Florence, where
the philosopher-artist of Athens would be more con-
genial than the Stagyrite to the temperament of the
citizens. For this purpose he turned to Marsilio Ficino
(1433-99), wno m tne quiet of the villa at Careggi, given
to him by Cosimo, and with the manuscripts furnished
by his patron, was engaged in translating into Latin all
the writings of Plato and Plotinus, illustrating and ex-
plaining their theories systematically in the eighteen
books of his Thcologia Platonica.

Thus Florence has the glory of having cooperated in
that age to deliver science from the chains of scholasti-
cism. But the art took precedence of the thought. The
members of the Platonic Academy, flowering again in
the shade of the Medicean hegemony, joined one to an-
other by a spiritual bond, strove to unite the Muses with
the Graces, to adorn the teachings of wisdom with the
beauty and the genial serenity admired in the dialogues
of Plato. Cristoforo Landino, one of the principal mem-
bers, not only expounded the doctrines of his school with
grace and elegance, in the Disputationcs camaldnlcnscs, but
left fine elegies in Latin, and a commentary in the ver-
nacular, on the.Commcdia, which inaugurated a new era
in the study of Dante. These were above all literati;
Ficino was above all a scholar, not so much original as
philosophic. They turned aside into Alexandrian mys-
ticism, while Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola (1463-
1494), called by his contemporaries the "phoenix of ge-
nius," a follower of Ficino in Florence, ended by losing
himself in the labyrinth of the Jewish Cabala.

To sum up, the Renaissance in Italy was artistic, not
philosophic; even Pico versified in Italian and composed
five books of Latin elegies. At Florence, center of the
new culture, a city adorned with the most varied and
admirable works of art, the contemplation of the beau-
tiful distracted from the speculative search for truth.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 115

Perhaps the best result of Platonism was in the gain to
art — seen, for instance, in the veil of ideality enveloping
a great part of the love-lyrics of Lorenzo de' Medici.
From Ficino and Landino he acquired a love for the Pla-
tonic philosophy and admiration for the classic world.
In the same meter, the tcrsa rima of the eclogues and of
historic and scientific poetry, he wrote the Corinto and
the Alter cazionc. In the former, the shepherd Corinto com-
plains like the Cyclops of Theocritus and Ovid; in the
latter a problem of the Platonic philosophy is treated.

Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent (1449-
1492), who, in fact if not in name, held in his firm hand
the government of Florence, and was so wise in his deal-
ings with other potentates as to become the moderator
and arbitrator of the peace of Italy, protected the hu-
manistic studies and the arts, increased the Medici li-
brary and his hereditary collections, lived with men of
letters, and was himself an able litterateur in the Italian
language. He began verse-writing early. When he was
but eighteen years old, Frederic of Aragon, second son
of the King of Naples, asked him to collect for him a
small anthology of Italian poems ; this he did, and among
them he introduced several of his own. All his lyrics
bear witness to his "long study and great love" of the
poets in Italian of former times and his own. If they
are Petrarchian, the imitation is not servile or exclusive.
He has indeed taken or imitated imagery and ideas from
other poets, especially from Cavalcanti and from the Vita
Nuova of Dante, which he has followed in accompanying
some of his poems with explanatory prose.

This occasioned much variety, but also a certain dis-
parity in his style. In his cansonicre Lorenzo did not
succeed in forming a manner of his own from the diverse
elements and styles of his models; his eclecticism con-
sisted in taking for imitation now this and now another
model; he is spontaneous and original only in his de-

116

scriptions of the aspects of nature and the images they
suggest to him. Therefore his other poetic work is to be
preferred to the canzonicre, formed as it is in a mould
constantly varying. Unable to unite various elements in
one artistic literary creation, Lorenzo passed without dif-
ficulty from a poetic idyl to a burlesque, from a serious
imitation to a parody. With the Ambra [name of a small
island], a little poem in octaves, which like Boccaccio's
idyl of Africo and Mensola, tells the story of one of the
many fables of transformation after the manner of Ovid,
he has in the same measure the Nencia da Barberino,
a jocose representation of the modes of thinking and feel-
ing of the peasantry, and in terza rima the Bconi, a witty
parody on the visione-trionfo. He is always imitating the
classics or following the traditions of the country. Thus
in the Beoni ("The Tipplers") the list of the names of
topers, which is its principal feature, makes it one of a
cycle of poems introducing such enumerations that be-
gan with Petrarch's Trionfi. Those that are serious, in
the form of allegorical visions or fantastic journeys, are
of ancient lovers, of famous personages, of beautiful
women; those in jest (as certain curious little poems by
the Florentine Stefano Finiguerri) are lists of bankrupts
and madmen. Then the Caccio col Falcone of Lorenzo is
not without resemblance to the fourteenth-century Caccie
of Sacchetti and Soldanieri. This also is in ottava rima
and has much of their light vivacity. If in the Selve
d'Amorc ("Forest of Love") Lorenzo appears original, it
is because in the variety of subjects such as no other has
associated together, if not in the Platonic conception of
love, he has mirrored the essentially versatile nature of
his genius. In these the elegiac element is less prominent
than idyllic picturesqueness, the amorous entreaty than
the myth — always in graceful octaves suggestive of Ari-
osto.
With Lorenzo de* Medici the humble poesy of the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 117

people mounts into the palace on Via Larga. He who
in traveling followed the reading of some page of St.
Augustine with the singing of ballate, wrote brisk and
light songs of this class and invented a special variety,
the licentious Canti Caniascialeschi (Carnival Songs),
sung by persons riding on cars through the city.

This homage to the muse of the populace came ap-
propriately from the son of a merchant who had risen
to supreme power. Wonderfully prolific, the people at
the close of the fifteenth century and for some time af-
terward fused in the crucible of the ottava rima matter,
sacred and profane, serious and jocose, classic and ro-
mantic. Not only prolific but felicitous, their barzcllctte
or frottole, simple rhythmic ballate, and their strambotti
or love-songs were pleasing, these by the easy rhythm,
those by the conceits ingeniously expressed in their eight
lines. The best of our poets of that time, satiated with
outworn Petrarchianism, drew their inspiration from the
people. Thus the prince of the humanists, Angelo Poli-
ziano (Politian), having learned the May-day songs of
the peasantry, reproduced them, often adding to their na-
tive freshness an Attic elegance. Moreover, he has sub-
stituted for the sonnets, forms of the popular song, mati-
nees, serenades, farewell songs, some of which are most
beautiful. The same may be said of Pulci, the move-
ment of popular love-ditties being reflected here and there
in the Morgantc.

Politian's masterpiece in Italian, the Stance per la
Giostra, also owes its greatest charm to the spontaneity
that marks the poetry of the people. The subject, a
tourney in Florence, seems peculiar for a poem of the
end of the fifteenth century. But the necessity for pleas-
ing imposed such subjects on the court poets. Giuliano,
the younger brother of Lorenzo, took part in the joust of
January 28, 1475, which was celebrated in Politian's poem,
and he carried off the highest honor. But the literati of

118 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the Renaissance made beauty of form the end of poetry ;
and to Politian the tourney was but a pretext. His in-
tent was to draw the form from the treasures of classic
art, fusing popular spontaneity with elegance derived
from the antique, and adapting to a little poem in octaves
the mythological setting, the copious personification, the
pagan coloring of his Latin songs. In the Stanse, an
idyl of love with a varied and pleasing succession of rural
scenes follows the epic opening of the poem. Giuliano
is represented as a youth who scorns love and is wholly
given to the exercises of the chase. By the revenge of
Cupid, he is drawn away to follow a white hind — a false
simulacrum — and loses himself in a strange, far-away
place, where he meets a nymph of marvelous beauty and
gentleness, standing for Simonetta Cattaneo— of whom
Giuliano was actually enamored — and immediately falls
in love with her. Cupid, exulting in his triumph, runs
to carry the news to his mother's kingdom in Cyprus.
This gives occasion for a digression upon Cyprus, a splen-
did paraphrase of Claudian, filling with picturesque de-
scription the second half of the first book. Only a few
stanzas of the second book were written. Either from
satiety or on account of the death of Giuliano, which
took place in 1478, the author left his poem at the point
where the principal part of the story, the tourney — less
poetical, perhaps, than the opening descriptions — was
about to begin. Possibly this is not to be regretted. The
charm of the Giostra is in the variety of subjects, in the
perfect fusion of diverse artistic elements, in the natural,
unforced mingling and assimilation in the verse of im-
agery taken from Ovid, Catullus, Virgil and Lucretius.

To appropriate and perfect, without regard to origin-
ality of the matter, aiming only at the felicitous repro-
duction of the manner and the ideas of the ancients, was
the common ambition of the Italians in this second stags
of the Renaissance. The strongest testimony to this is

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 119

afforded by a book of prose in Italian with verses inter-
spersed, which was received with admiration in Italy and
in other countries — the Arcadia of Sannazzaro.

Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530), friend of Pontano, and
fellow-Academician (his academic name was Actius
Sincerus), was a gentleman dear to the Aragonese not
less for his teachings than for his valor in war. He was
one of the best poets in the revived Latin. His Piscatoria,
of Virgilian elegance, his elegies and his epigrams, among
which, together with gay juvenile poems, are found others
bewailing the past and pouring out the tenderest affec-
tions of the heart — these make of Sannazzaro a precursor
and harbinger of the great century, into which his life
extended. What was his aim in the Arcadia? A mosaic
of imitations of those ancient writers that were so fa-
miliar to him, in the form of a pastoral romance, of
mingled prose and verse, like the Amcto of Boccaccio, and
containing an autobiographic allegory with allusions to
real personages and events. The verses are eclogues, the
prose parts descriptions of rural scenes; the theater of
action is Mt. Partenio in Arcadia. Consequently the imi-
tations are of ancient bucolics ; and every time that these
are brought within his reach by community of subject,
Sannazzaro shows that he had more than one in mind.
To contemporaries this plunder seemed fine and the ex-
cessive luxury of ornament a splendid thing. But read-
ing the Arcadia now, we are wearied with the fictitious
world peopled by characters faint, symbolic, uniform. We
prefer the piscatorial eclogues in which Sannazzaro has
drawn with vivacity and freshness the shore of his
country. We prefer, were it only for the finely cut hex-
ameters, the short poem De Partu Virginis, the careful
work of his maturer years. The "originality in imitation,"
which cannot be denied to Politian, is lacking entirely
to the author of Arcadia; nor can there be any compari-
son between his measures and the ottava rima of the

120 FRANCESCO FLAMINl

Stanze, in which Politian has fused into new harmony the
diverse tones of his multiplex imitations.

None the less the Arcadia is a work most important in
the history of our literature. Into the midst of the rhe-
toric feeling sometimes makes its way ; and that it is sin-
cere and warm with the poet is shown by the fact that
he followed his king into exile. Sannazzaro appears to
us the chief of those who continued the tradition of Boc-
caccio, as Bembo continued that of Petrarch, followed
in the reforming of his own rhymes by Sannazzaro him-
self. In Arcadia he not only imitated the style of the
Tuscan novelist, spoiling where he did not cut away en-
tirely that magnificent foliage, a little too luxuriant, which
he should simply have pruned, but he led the prose back
to the faithful reproduction of the idiomatic type of Boc-
caccio from the hybrid dialect of his Neapolitan confra-
ternity. Masuccio Salernitano too, the most remarkable
among the novelists of the fifteenth century, must have
had the Decameron in mind when he wrote his Novcllino,
which draws its material, now from the great patrimony
of popular tradition, now from actual facts, especially
from the corruption of the clergy of his time. His vocab-
ulary and syntax abound in elements of the vernacular.
Sannazzaro, on the other hand, in the revised edition of
his pastoral romance (1504), cleared away almost entirely
from the language the taint of dialect which was in the
preceding editions as an effect of the uncertainty of pro-
nunciation and writing at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury.

The Arcadia represents a stage of our prose more ad-
vanced than that which had been represented in Tuscany
by the writings of Dominici, Palmieri, and Alberti. Gio-
vanni Dominici (1356-1419), a Dominican and an ardent
opponent of classic studies, which he deemed harmful to
religion, wrote Governo di Cura Familiare and Libra dell'
Amore di Carita, with the object of counteracting the ef-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 121

feet of the humanistic writings, and inspired by the most
austere Christian morality. He used the current Floren-
tine speech, but with little skill and with a certain exag-
geration derived from imitation of ascetic Latin prose.
Matteo Palmieri (1406-1475) held the highest offices in
his native Florence and learned from good masters an
elegant Latin style, which he used for historical work.
In Italian he wrote a philosophical and theological poem
in imitation of Dante, La Cittd di Vita, ("The City of
Life"), and a dialogue Delia Vita Civile ("Of the Civic
Life"), from classic sources, in particular from Cicero,
Quintilian and Plutarch.

Leon Battista Alberti (1407-1472), of the distinguished
Florentine family of the name, a man that may be said
to have been a universal genius and a writer still held
in honor, treated of science and of art, of morals and of
aesthetics, with equal acumen and lucidity, reviving in
his Latin works the subtle inventions of Lucian, and in
his Italian dialogues the learned prose style. His literary
fame rests largely on the four books Delia Famiglia, on
the education of sons, the government of the household,
and the choice and conserving of friendships, with co-
pious erudition drawn from ancient writers and from the
experience of life. The style of Palmieri and that of Al-
berti, while tinctured with the Latin, especially Palmi-
eri's, still comes quite near to the simplicity of the four-
teenth century ; so true is this, that the third book of the
Famiglia, being attributed to Agnolo Pandolfini, who
wrote at an earlier date, was excepted from the general
neglect of fifteenth-century prose. As a specimen of lan-
guage it pleased and still pleases the purists no less than
the Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini da Siena, by Feo Bel-
cari (1410-1484), another Florentine who is highly praised
for the limpid and pure style of his eloquence. We may,
perhaps we should, prefer their prose to that of Sannaz-
zaro. Certainly, the Arcadia is more wearisome reading

122 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

to-day than the lively novel of Grasso Legnaiuolo, the
familiar letters of Alessandra Macinghi-Strozzi, where
sincere feeling is expressed in the current language of
Tuscany, and some of the chronicles and familiar remin-
iscences, praiseworthy for the pure simplicity of their
style.

But let the mind be turned to the prose written with
serious artistic intent; let the historic chronicles — the
History of Milan, by Bernardino Corio, and the Com-
pend of the History of the Kingdom of Naples, by Pan-
dolfo Collenuccio of Pesaro — be opened; and also the
novels — not those coarsely written and put together at
random, like the licentious work of Gentile Sermini of
Siena, but those produced with care after the plan of the
Decameron, like the Porrettane (so named because they
are supposed to have been recited at the Baths of Por-
retta), by Giovanni Sabbadino degli Arienti of Bologna;
and, finally, let the collections be examined where will
be found double-distilled love-letters and carefully pre-
pared discourses ; and it will be seen that from these wri-
tings to the Arcadia our prose took a gigantic step.

The cultivation of form, the study of the classics, will
later carry to perfection the epic of chivalry. In the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century, artistic poets, taking it
from the hands of the minstrels where it was degenerat-
ing into rigidity, endowed it with life and variety.

Luigi Pulci, a Florentine (1432-1484), a great friend
of Lorenzo de' Medici, from whom he received political
commissions, and to whom he sent facetious verses and
letters full of fire, was a genius and a humorist, witty,
fantastic, biting. The sonnets in which he derides Bar-
tolommeo Scala, Chancelor of the Republic, and those in
which he attacks Ser Matteo Franco, another "bizarre
Florentine spirit," who repaid him in the same coin, dis-
play his satiric humor. His love-songs and the Bcca da
Dicomano, in which, imitating the Ncncia, he openly paro-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 123

dies rustic poesy, show the popular character of his in-
spiration. In the Morgante, a romantic poem in ottava
ritna, written between 1460 and 1470, published in 1482,
and reprinted with five additional cantos a year later,
Pulci, playful and witty, may be said to be half-way be-
tween the people and the literati, between popular and
artistic poetry. He conserves the best of the minstrels,
the easy movement of the octaves that were set to music
in San Martino, the religious invocations at the beginning
and the pious auguries at the end of each canto; but he
tempers and enlivens, arranges and gives color. Thus
from his hands, in place of a feeble and tiresome rigma-
role, comes a book well constructed and brilliant.

Luigi Pulci, as Rajna appropriately observes, "has only
plastered the rustic walls built by a poet of the people,
placing upon them a roof constructed with rafters and
tiles whose origin we can discover." In the first twenty-
three cantos he has taken the material from an anony-
mous poem, also in octaves, written about 1380, in which
are related the enterprises and adventures of Orlando and
the other paladins exiled through the perfidy of the Ma-
ganza. In the five cantos added later he was indebted to
the Italian versions of the rout of Roncesvalles, especial-
ly to the Spagna in Rima, a very popular poem in the fif-
teenth century, not without merit. Yet in his hands the
story assumes a new and original character, by the inge-
nious mirthfulness of some of the inventions, by the
abundance of Florentine phrases, by the fun that lurks
within every part of it. Without exactly intending to sati-
rize the world of chivalry, the subtle Florentine shows us
paladins, to more than one of whom the voice of the appe-
tite sounds not less imperious than that of honor. Mor-
gante, big as a mountain and of voracity proportioned to
his stature, dies comically, because a crab has bitten his
heel ! Pulci added two very long and important episodes
of his own invention: that of Margutti, a half giant,

124 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

shrewd and knavish, who laughs at everything and at last
bursts with great clatter in a fit of immoderate merri-
ment; and that of Astarotte, a demon very wise, honest
and serviceable, who discourses learnedly on theology,
and preaches Christian dogmas. In the Morgante, as in
the Ciriffo Calvaneo, a poem of chivalry attributed to
Luca Pulci, the constant fun, contrasting with the orig-
inal dignity of the subject, is a source of amusement.
Luigi Pulci is believed to be the author of the Ciriffo
also, with the exception of the beginning; for Luca, his
brother, was a poetaster, as shown by the Epistole in
imitation of the Epistolce Heroidum of Ovid which he left,
and his Driadeo d'Amore, a mythological poem in octaves,
where the little good poetry seems to belong to Luigi
himself. Certainly the other little poem, the Giostra di
Lorenzo de' Medici, which long went under the name of
Lucca, is the work of his brother.

The Morgante, a faithful mirror of the mind and nature
of Pulci "makes a place for itself" among the romances
of chivalry. The last natural development of this literary
genus, which Ariosto afterward turned aside upon the
lines of the epics of antiquity, is represented by the Or-
lando Innamorato of Matteo Maria Boiardo. Count of Scan-
diano.

Boiardo (1434-1494) was one of the most distinguished
gentlemen of the court of Ferrara. There, and in his
native Scandiano, and wherever he was sent on important
missions, he took his recreation from his various cares of
office in the company of literati and in congenial studies.
He wrote songs in Latin and a bucolic in the manner of
Virgil; he translated from Herodotus, Xenophon, Lu-
cian, Apuleius and Cornelius Nepos; his work in Italian
included a fine collection of songs, a theatrical composi-
tion, Timon, and some eclogues giving effective pictures
of love and nature.

What did this learned feudal lord design to produce

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 125

when he put his hand to his romantic poem? A work of
art according to his studies and his theory, and a book
of feats of prowess and adventures, which were suggested
to him by the traditions and customs of the nobility.
Therefore he turned to the Breton cycle of tales, essen-
tially aristocratic, which the higher classes of society es-
pecially delighted in ; but, aware of the popularity of the
characters of the Carolingian cycle— old acquaintances
throughout Italy — and of their reality in the imagination
of the people, he took his motif from this, and followed
it in the design of his work, at the same time enlivening
and, as it were, rejuvenating it with material from the
Breton cycle. In fine, he effected a fusion of the world
of Arthur with the world of Charlemagne, and from both
cycles, as well as from that of classic antiquity, he took
with discretion and skill, re-shaping and giving to the
whole the impress of his own genius. Thus it may be
said truly that he created a new poetic world, in which
love, before unknown to the Carolingian heroes, appears
so triumphant as sometimes to turn Orlando, the hero,
into ridicule.

For the rest, an "interior laugh," as Pio Rajna says, a
laugh bubbling up from under the outward appearance
of seriousness, winds through the Orlando Innamorato
without giving the impression of parody. A cavalier
himself, generous and upright, the Count of Scandiano
admired the valor, the courtesy, the knightly loyalty
that he drew in his scenes; but as a good humanist, not
destitute of practical sense, when he awoke from his
poetic fantasies he saw them as such and laughed at
them to himself. Turning into one channel, as we have
said, the two principal rivers through which the me-
diaeval epic flowed, making the hero of the Chanson de
Roland forget the beautiful Alda for the pagan Angelica,
and sending out the serious paladins of King Charles on
the track of frivolous and fantastic adventures, which

126 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

were the delight of Arthur's knights, Boiardo opened
an inexhaustible mine to romantic Italian poetry. "The
ladies, the knights, the arms, and the loves" have a large
share in the Orlando Innamorato. In other respects as well
it preluded Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — by the characters,
by the subtle irony scattered through it, and by the mar-
velous richness of poetic invention. But it lacks the
charm of art instilled by sane classicism, which alone
could render pleasing the immense mass of adventure
often carelessly thrown together. Neither has Boiardo,
a Ferrarese, the pure and vivacious language of the Tus-
cans, which his illustrious contemporary not many years
later knew so well to make his own.

In the drama the effects of the Renaissance were not
seen till a later period. During the fifteenth century
there were only imitations of the classics in Latin theat-
rical compositions, caprices of erudition, without influ-
ence on the vernacular drama of the time. Fine pas-
sages, it is true, were not lacking in the humanistic come-
dies; true, too, that the Philodoxus of Leon Battista Al-
berti, which might be thought a classic work, is pleas-
ing by the simple and tender language of its love-pas-
sages, and that others among these comedies, borrowing
from the Decameron or gathering plots and characters
from contemporary life, drew pictures of their time full
of comic force. But in order that, idiom and measure be-
ing changed, the Italian drama might come into compe-
tition, as it were, with those of the Greeks and of the
Romans, it was necessary that two diverse branches
should flow into one — the sacred and the profane, or clas-
sic. The idiom and meter, in fact, had been for almost
two centuries the medium of the religious drama, of
which a new form, the rappresentasione sacra, gained popu-
larity and importance in the fifteenth century.

Not independent of the shadow of the devosione, and
perhaps not even of the French "mystery" of the four-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 127

teenth century, the rappresentazione sacra was a thing all
Tuscan, which blossomed on the banks of the Arno, from
new shoots on the old trunk of the scenic parades in.
use at Florence, especially at the feast of St. John. The
pantomimes of scenes from the Old and New Testa-
ments were now clothed in words; the ottava rima, dear
to the people, became the favorite measure; the lives of
the saints and legends of a moral tendency supplied va-
ried and pleasing material. Among the authors of these
pieces were Feo Belcari, some of whose work of this
class is very good, and Bernardo Pulci — the youngest of
the three poet brothers — who owes his reputation more
to a dramatic version of the famous legend of Barlaam
than to any of his songs, to his version of the Bucolics,
or to his little poem in octaves on the Passions di Cristo.

Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote a rappresentazione, Saints
John and Paul, which is justly praised. But this dra-
matic form could not be very long-lived, on account of
its anachronisms, its lack of verisimilitude, its abrupt
changes of the action from one to another of the places,
which were represented in adjoining compartments. Yet
it included elements, intrinsic and extrinsic, adapted for
separate development; for example, that which may be
called realistic, introduced into the rappresentazione sacra
to gratify the desire of the people for seeing every-day
life reproduced upon the stage; and, on the other hand,
the marvelous or romantic, abounding in some of them,
as the Stella and the Santa Uliva. In fine, there was a
gradually increasing tendency in these sacred dramas to
pass into secular spectacles. It occurred to a Florentine
humanist to adapt the language, the rhythm and the
stage-setting to a fable of classic mythology. The earliest
experiment in secular drama in Italian is the Orfeo
("Orpheus"), produced in 1471.

In this drama, written by Politian at Mantua in two
days when he was but seventeen, during certain festivals

128 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

in honor of Cardinal Gonzaga, the fable of Orpheus and
Eurydice is presented briefly in dialogue, and, as in the
sacred rappresentazioni, it is preceded by an annunciation
put into the mouth of a celestial messenger — Mercury in
this, instead of an angel ; and two places stand before the
spectators at the same time— one a plain with a moun-
tain in the background, and the other Hades, into which
at a certain moment the hero passes. It is not a drama
proper; because the story is shown in all its parts at the
same time without progressive evolution and contrasted
effects in the characters. Instead, the very simple plot
is made up of short lyrics in Italian, grouped about a
Latin Sapphic in flattery of the Cardinal. This forms,
as it were, the nucleus, and divides the short composition
into a polymetric eclogue, and a rappresentazione, similar
to the sacred, in octaves narrating hastily rather than
representing — when they are not lyrics resembling the
popular strambotto, closed at last by a Bacchic barzelletta,
sung by dancing Maenads.

The example of Politian was followed at the court of
Ferrara, seat of courtesy and culture, by Niccolo Pos-
tumo, Signore of Correggio, a perfect cavalier, educated
by study of the works of genius. In his Cefalo, a para-
phrase of an episode of the Metamorphoses, he gave the
first secular drama in Italian that develops an actual plot.
Other mythological fables, like the Danae of Baldassare
Taccone, recited at Milan in 1496, have full dramatic de-
velopment and required sumptuous settings. In these
the mimic coreographic representations of classic sub-
jects, already in use at Italian courts, assumed literary
form, just as the popular scenic pantomimes of Florence
had acquired theirs in the sacre rappresentazione.

Thus even in the drama at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury was shown the identity of taste and the community
of intellectual amusement existing between the upper
classes of society and the people. Lyric poetry offers

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 129

more remarkable examples. In Rome, when improvisa-
tions were given by Bernardo Accolti, of Arezzo, called
"the Unique," the tradesmen and mechanics closed their
shops, as on festal days, and gathered to listen to him,
besides Academicians and prelates of the Curia; at Na-
ples, under Ferdinand I of Aragon, the poetic challenges
of the singers popular with the people were reproduced
in the circle of gentlemen, more harmonious and less free.
So poetry became an amusement of courtly society.
Professional poets entertained the leisure of princes, giv-
ing their work a character of buffoonery. Gentlemen that
were friends of the Muses versified for the gratification
of illustrious ladies and to smooth the way to their gal-
lantries. This class of writers have no sincere senti-
ments to express, nor would know how to express them ;
their study is not to produce work excellent in itself, but
to have the applause of dilettanti, whose curiosity must be
stimulated. Therefore the merit of the poet depends, ac-
cording to the taste, on the conceits, the whimsicalities,
the unexpected turns, on drawing material from rapid
rhymes by a nonenity. There is a preziosita of concep-
tion and of form, which is derived not so much from
abuse of metaphorical language as from ill use of it —
that is, from attributing to the proper sense of the word
that which is merely figurative. For this, the names
of Antonio Tebaldeo, of Ferrara, and Serafino de' Cimi-
nelli dall' Aquila have come down to us with sorry fame.
The first was a litterateur dear to the Este family, to
Gonzaga, and to Leo X. The second was a wandering
singer, expert in music and improvisation, who traversed
all Italy in triumph, applauded by the people and ca-
ressed by princes.

This preziosita was an exaggeration of arts already

used by Petrarch, adopted and carried to excess from

a mania for applause. Those who, not being professional

poets, had no reason to yield to this mania, were care-

o

130 FRANCESCO FLAMINl

ful to avoid that grave defect, and even at the time of
Tebaldeo and of Serafino followed the tradition of "Pe-
trarchism immune from conceits." They are cold and
feeble, however, with the exception of Boiardo, whose
songs are marked by richness of imagination and
freshness of inspiration. He and Benedetto Gareth, called
// Cariteo, (i45o?-i5i4), a native of Barcelona, but living
in Naples, where he succeeded Pontano as Secretary of
State, are the only writers of love-lyrics of the end of
the fifteenth century that deserve to be read ; as the only
burlesque writer of that age really praiseworthy is II
Pistoia. II Cariteo began like Serafino — rather was a
model to Serafino in the strambotti — but afterward changed
his standards of art. In his work, together with subtle-
ties and artifices are classic imitations, signally faithful,
and beautiful pictures of scenery, inspired by the Nea-
politan marine. II Pistoia — that is, Antonio Cammelli,
of Pistoia (14407-1502) — who served the Este in a
humble office and afterward was obliged to wander from
court to court — wrote innumerable sonnets, jocose and
satirical, and political, and developed the terni fizzi of
Italian burlesque poetry with a spontaneous vivacity that
makes of him the most conspicuous precursor of Berni.

CHAPTER V
THE LAST STAGE OF THE RENAISSANCE

^Z4 N the period extending from the descent of Charles

0J VIII (1494) to the sack of Rome (1527) and the

A 01 end of the siege of Florence (1530), the work of

the Renaissance finished its development, both

in thought and in art. On the one side, the critical and

empirical tendency of Italian minds, already exercised

HISTORY OP ITALIAN LITERATURE 131

in public life, gives place to the new science of state, and
has its highest expression in Machiavelli; on the other
hand, the artistic tendency, which we have seen making
Italians into a brotherhood in admiration of classic an-
tiquity and cultivation of its forms, gives place to the
formation of the poetic style, and has its climax in the
Orlando Furioso, where is found all of most exquisite
that the art of the Renaissance could produce. Ludovico
Ariosto is the supreme artist, as Machiavelli is the su-
preme statesman, of that great and unhappy age. The
former, in Ferrara, city of knightly traditions rejuvenated
amid illustrious classicism, takes for development the
only material offered for Italian poetry, in the decadence
of religion and morality, without inventing a well or-
dered plot, without rising to philosophic conceptions.
The latter in Florence, the most modern and democratic
of the Italian States, studies with profound objectivity
the human reality, and mirrors in crystalline words the
analytic or synthetic work of his thought. Amid the
host of the Italians who took part in the literary move-
ment of the great century, these two alone emerge like
Dante's Farinata, dalla cintola in su ("from the girdle up-
ward"), not by reason of events or historic necessity, but
by force of genius.

Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469. His
studies were not properly those of a humanist, nor was
he able to gain real and extended culture; but he owed
much to observation, and accustomed himself, from youth
up, to reflection on historic events. In public life, to
which he was called by the traditions of the family, he
began in 1498 with an office more humble than its title
would indicate — Florentine Secretary. He was one of the
two secretaries of the Signoria, and presided at the sec-
ond law-courts more in fact than by right. The first
Chancelor was Marcello Virgilio Adriani, a humanist of
the old order, from whom Machiavelli may perhaps have

132 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

drawn a little classic erudition and have been encouraged
to the study of beautiful form with which he afterward
enlivened the dry reasoning in his writings.

The first missions of Machiavelli, after his entrance
into office, were to Catherine Sforza, Countess of Imola
and Forli, and to Louis XII of France. Afterward he
was sent twice to Duke Valentino (Caesar Borgia), and
in a way assisted at the most astute acts of usurpation
of that noble — learning and admiring. He then proposed
the Borgian politics as an example to his feeble and
shuffling republic ; and in a Descrizione del modo temito dal
Duca nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fcrmo,
ecc. ("Description of the Method taken by the Duke in
the Murder of," etc.) , he related events he had witnessed,
with fictions that prove him to have intended, not to
write a historic account, but to demonstrate a theory,
rising to it from examination of the facts. Valentino
appears there, more than any other, as a model of the
ardent and active prince to be ideally represented later
by Machiavelli.

After the final ruin of the Borgia, in whom he had so
trusted, Niccolo was returned to France; and then he
was engaged on missions concerning the war in Pisa.
About this time he wrote the Decennale Primo, ("The
First Decennial"). This was in terza rima, the meter of
historic and didactic, not popular poems, and was a
juicy narrative of the events of the last decennium, con-
taining, in fine, an intimation of the great idea of its
author — the restoration of the communal militia. This
idea, long cherished, he set himself to carry into effect
when, at the return of a legation to Julius II, he had
seen Florence saved from imminent peril by the valor
of his captain, Antonio Giacomini Tebalducci. For three
years Niccolo attended with ardor to the forming of the
Ordinanza Fiorentina. The Nove ddla Milizia was insti-
tuted, and he was elected its secretary.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 133

Again, in December, 1507, we find the great historian
in a distant land, this time in Germany, at the court of
Maximilian I, where he was able to make important
observations of the Swiss and the Germans. In the Re-
port of Affairs of the Magna, and in the Sketch of German
Affairs — which, with many inaccuracies, contain acute
intuitions — he shows that he discerned quite clearly the
cause of the political weakness of Germany. In the tak-
ing of Pisa, and in a mission at Venetia confided to him.
afterward, he gave proof of practical sagacity, finding
time amid his activities to write a "Second Decennial"
— not so able as the first. Thence he was sent, in 1510,
to Blois, to the court of Louis XII again; and this time
the fruit of his embassy beyond the mountains was a
brief Sketch of tJw Affairs of France, rich in exact obser-
vations on the political constitution and the usages of
the country. After new journeys and labors, Machia-
velli was reduced to a time of forced leisure. He had in
vain redoubled his ardor for organizing defenses for
Florence, in face of the menaces of Spain. The militia
gathered at Prato could not resist the attack of soldiers
trained to war; the Gonfaloniere Soderini was obliged
to retire, and the Medici returned to power. Niccolo,
who had been loyal to Soderini to the last, was deprived
of office, confined for a year within the territory of the
Republic, and forbidden to be seen in the palace or even
in the city.

So ends for Machiavelli what he called his "long ex-
perience in modern affairs." Henceforth he will turn his
attention to the lessons of history and with the light of
his experience will apply all the power of his genius to
calm reflection on historic events and political science.

Having lost the salary of his office, Machiavelli was
obliged to retire with his numerous family to a little
villa near St. Casciano. His life there is described in a
letter written December 10, 1513, to Francesco Vettori.

134 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

"After making myself a good-for-nothing," he says,
"playing tric-trac all day in a tavern, I go back in the
evening to my study, and turn to speak with the ancients
and entertain myself with them as an equal to equals."
From these nocturnal studies resulted The Prince and
the Discourses upon the First Ten Books of Titus Livius
— admirable prose, in which the author reduces to unity,
in a full and consistent theory, the maxims suggested by
experience, which were already scattered through his
earlier writings.

The Discourses form a treatise in three books on polit-
ical science. As he declares in the dedication, it was
his design to discuss matters of state that he had ob-
served and taken part in, or had read in books. There-
fore, while he takes the material for his reasonings from
Livy and sometimes from Polybius, he condenses into
general propositions the observations made in the course
of his diplomatic career, and illustrates them by exam-
ples from the history of Rome. Some of his propositions
are worthy of a modern statesman; others are immoral
and constitute the famous "Machiavellianism." To make
great history the important thing is, that the State should
be able to organize and conserve itself — the supreme ne-
cessity, before which, he maintains, religion and moral-
ity ought to retire from the field, nor can there be any
question of good or bad, but solely of useful or injurious.
In accordance with these principles, he speaks of honor-
able fraud and generous wickedness. His error consists
in having gone into the field of theory beyond the limits
of practical policy, making a too general application of
principles and a too forced adaptation to every age of
maxims drawn from Roman history.

None the less, this work reveals the full maturity of
Machiavelli's genius. It anticipates the ideas and meth-
ods of our time in its study of historic and social events
as natural phenomena, searching out their relations one

to another and the laws that govern them; and reasons
upon them with serene calmness, in a style lucid, pre-
cise, without exaggeration and without floridity, sharply
and clearly outlining the thought.

With the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus
Lh'ius is closely connected The Prince (1513). This fa-
mous work was written with a practical aim to instruct
Giuliano de' Medici in the method for forming such a
State as he desired. Giuliano died suddenly, and Machia-
velli was obliged to dedicate the book instead to Lorenzo
di Piero de' Medici, without reaping any advantage from
it; but the aim affords an explanation of many things in
the book. Giuliano, who, with the aid of Leo X, wished
to form a principality for himself, in essential characteris-
tics resembled Valentino, who, sustained by Alexander
VI, had made himself master of the cities of Romagna.
This is the reason that Borgia in The Prince serves to
incarnate that conception of a founder and organizer of
States upon which Machiavelli built his political edifice.

T-hc Prince is a more organic work than the Discourses.
In an effectively simple style the author explains the
models necessary to constitute the principality; illus-
trates them with examples from contemporary history;
defines the demeanor proper to the sovereign when he
is installed in his place of authority. Unlike the political
philosophers of the Middle Ages and the scholars of the
Renaissance, Machiavelli does not ask for perfection in
the prince. Above all things the prince must be astute
and able; at need he should not hesitate to break his
faith. From this and other immoral maxims contained
in the work, we may perhaps find relief in the closing
words overflowing with ideality and sentiment. There
the author turns his thought to unhappy Italy, arena of
foreigners, which, "without head and without organiza-
tion," drops blood from its wounds and cries to God for
a redeemer. "Oh, may the liberator appear! Who can

136 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

say with what love he would be received, with what
thirst for vengeance, with what unyielding faith, with
what devotion, with what tears!" True, this beautiful
dream of the redemption of his country does not reflect
precisely the constant trend of Machiavelli's thought;
but it has inspired one of the most eloquent pages that
Italian prose can boast.

Having profited nothing by The Prince, Niccolo was
obliged to return to San Casciano. There he began an
allegorical satire in tcrsa rima, the Asino d'Oro ("Golden
Ass"), in imitation of Plutarch's Grillo and with remin-
iscences of Dante. But he left it incomplete ; his genius
was not adapted to creations purely literary. He profited
more by frequent visits at Florence in the Orti Oricellari,
where, by his frank and acute interpretations of Roman
history, he was cordially welcomed among scholars, ad-
mirers of antiquity and, at the same time, full of prac-
tical wisdom. His success there drew on him the at-
tention of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici; and by invitation
of that prelate he treated of the best method of reor-
ganizing the government of the city in a Discourse on
the Reformation of the State of Florence, which is a proof
of his persistence in republican principles. Afterward
the Cardinal sent him to Lucca, and this mission, which
was quite modest, gave occasion for the writing of the
Life of Castruccio Castracani, a politico-military romance,
resembling the Cyropcdia of Xenophon and the Life of
Agathocles by Diodorus Siculus. In it the condottiero
of Lucca appears ideally transfigured, as it were, repre-
senting the "new prince," the object of the author's af-
fection.

There was a better result of the meetings of the Orti
than this book, a dialogue supposed to have taken place
there, in which the author's opinions are set forth and
defended against the famous Captain Fabrizio Colonna;
it is entitled The Art of War. Most noble is its leading

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 137

idea: that the citizens themselves should fight for the
defense and the glory of their country ; military art ought
not to be a trade. The work has also a technical value
and contains wise observations and original thoughts.
As in his other writings he has attempted to formulate
a science of statecraft, so in The Art of War he under-
takes a science of strategy, in language worthy of
modern tacticians. As is his custom, he brings together
the practice of his time and lessons from the ancients.
He draws from Livy, Caesar, Polybius, above all from
Vegetius and Frontinus, and, adding observations made
in his travels, upon the Swiss and the Lanzkncchts (pike-
men, mercenary soldiers). What he says of chivalry
seems as if written to-day. It is to be regretted that
in his system of war, founded upon the Roman legion,
he did not avoid a fatal error — the declaration of his
want of faith in firearms.

In 1520 Machiavelli carried out an appropriate and
well-rewarded work. The officials of the Studio of Flor-
ence, of whom Cardinal Giulio was chief, commissioned
him to write the history of the city. Thus originated the
Jstorie Florentine, on which Machiavelli worked more as-
siduously after the Orti had been disbanded in conse-
quence of a conspiracy against the Cardinal that had
been formed in their meetings.

It is really history, and not chronicles. Machiavelli,
while he continued the traditions of Bruni and of Poggio,
did not design, like them, to produce a rhetorical work,
a model of Latin eloquence, but rather to relate events
in the idiom of the country, searching out hidden causes
and keeping political measures always in sight. It is di-
vided into eight books. The first book is an introduc-
tion intended to make clear the rise of the Italian po-
tentates, reproducing as to facts the first ten books of
Flavio Biondo. In the events, whose connection he
studies and proves in a way before unknown, the author

138 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

seeks the evidence for the essential principles of his
theory. In the second, third, and fourth books he gives
the domestic history of Florence from the beginning to
the return of Cosimo (1434), compiling successively from
Villani, from Marchionne Stefani, and from Giovanni
Cavalcanti, a careless and untrustworthy chronicler of
the fifteenth century. The synthesis he makes of the
political revolutions of the city is very felicitous; he is
the first among his contemporary historians to seek the
reasons for them and define their connection. Herein
lies the chief value of the history; for, as to the matter,
the author, having chosen the work he thinks best to
follow through one of his books or a part of one, ex-
hausts it as fully as he can without comparing it with
others, without considering its value, often inserting or-
namental details or changing a little by caprice. Thus
in the last four books, treating of the affairs of the outer
life of Florence, Machiavelli, speaking diffusely of the
wars of Italy, has of set purpose exaggerated the bad
faith of the soldiers of fortune and their military art,
which he so much abhorred; for to him the bending of
facts to the demonstration of a theory was a thing more
than lawful. Of course this takes from the work its di-
rect historic value. For the rest, it has other merits.
Aside from the style, varied and lively, though a little
unequal, the intuitions of genius and the exact interpre-
tation of the inner significance of many events make it
pleasant to read and profitable to reflect upon.

In his later years Machiavelli was constantly em-
ployed, but in affairs of little moment. When the Me-
dici were driven out anew in 1527, he hoped to be re-
called to the office of secretary, but in vain. The same
year he died.

By the side of Machiavelli, the political literature of
the Italians in the last stage of the Renaissance boasts
Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) ; he, too, was born in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 139

Florence, and was educated in public life. He was of a
family that had enjoyed all the honors; and as heir of
the experience of his ancestors, he manifested from his
youth practical wisdom and ambition to rise high in
the State. He took a doctorship in law quite early,
taught Istituzioni in the Florentine Studio, and acquired
reputation as an able advocate. He also held office for
a time. This, giving him opportunity to associate with
statesmen, to seek out documents, and to become fa-
miliar with the character of parties, enabled him to write
at twenty-six a Storia Fiorentina, from the Tumult of the
Ciompi to the Re-acquisition of Pisa (1378-1509), which
appears like the work of a mature man, by its limpidity,
precision and impartiality, and by the profound obser-
vation of men revealed in its cold and quiet manner.

In 1512 Guicciardini was sent as ambassador to Spain.
He describes every aspect of the country in an apposite
Rclazione. Later he held new offices in his own country,
among them, in 1515, the priorato, priorship. In the fol-
lowing year Leo X entrusted to him the government of
Modena, then that of Reggio, and at last of Parma also,
with the title and authority of Commissary General.
This government he held with a hand of iron, eluding
the snares of numerous enemies and gaining honor for
skill in factional warfare. Clement VII put his aptitude
for administering government in the provinces into fur-
ther requisition by choosing him as President of the Ro-
magna, where he conducted himself with prudence and
almost despotic obstinacy. In 1526 he was created Lieu-
tenant-General of the Pontifical army; but the Holy
Alliance was losing, the Medici were forced to leave
Florence again, and after the fall of the Gonfaloniere
Niccolo Capponi, Guicciardini had to retire to his villa of
Finocchieto.

Here he gave himself to writing and reflection. Be-
tween 1524 and 1527 he had expressed his own opinion

140 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

concerning the form of government most fitting for the
city, in a dialogue, Del Reggimento di Fircnze, which is
supposed to have taken place in 1494 immediately after
the first expulsion of the Medici. It proposes a mixed
government uniting the best features of monarchy, oli-
garchy and democracy. Guicciardini's tendencies were to
the positive and practical; he was an enemy to theoriz-
ing ; he disdained what did not appear to him really fea-
sible, and he deemed it his duty to recall to reality any
one under the illusion of a mere theory. Thus in his
Considerations upon Machiavelli's Discourses he shows cer-
tain judgments of his friend to be too arbitrary, and
his disregard of facts too one-sided; and that he had
too much overlooked the essential difference between his
age and that of the Romans.

These tendencies appear more clearly in the Political
and Civic Reminiscences, written during his residence
in the country. This series of ultra-fifteenth-century
maxims, suggested to the author by his experience, re-
veals the political and moral spirit of the Italy of the
sixteenth century; and when one considers how often
the question of profit is placed before that of duty, how,
according to Guicciardini, the wise man ought not to
sacrifice his own advantage to great and lofty aims the
possibility of whose attainment is doubtful, this helps us
to understand why our country was at that time so great
and yet so weak. Of course this does not detract from
the value of the Ricordi, in which the results of an acute
observer's experience of life and reflections upon it are
condensed with vigor of thought and lucidity of expres-
sion.

With the end of the siege of Florence (1530) the polit-
ical activity of Guicciardini was renewed. He then ex-
erted himself to make the power of the Medici per-
manent, aiming, not only to recommend himself to the
popular party, but to remove all pretexts for foreign in-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 141

tervention. * The next year he was in Bologna, Vice-
Legate of the Pontiff; then, after the death of Clement
VII, in Florence again. And here it is not pleasant to
see him become the counselor and advocate in the de-
fense of Duke Alexander. In 1535 the exiles in Naples
complained to Charles V of the misfortunes of Florence
and the oppression of the tyrant, begging for observance
of the terms of the capitulation of 1530, that is, a free
popular government. Guicciardini answered the accu-
sation for the Medici very skilfully. By this, however,
he acted only in accordance with his principles; for he
held that it is useless and dangerous to attempt changes
of government, and that the honest citizen ought to ac-
cept the existing state of affairs, without cherishing il-
lusions, and should seek to change things for the better
only by giving counsel to the authorities. Nor did he
cease to favor in his heart the government by the few;
for when Alessandro de' Medici was killed, two years
later, he secured the succession to Cosimo, but tried to
restrict his authority, even denying him the title of Duke.
This only served to alienate from him the favor of the
new master of Florence; and in consequence he with-
drew to his villa of Arcetri, where he died in 1540.

Guicciardini's History of Italy, covering in its twenty
books the period of the struggle between France and
Spain and the triumph of Spain in our peninsula (1492-
J534)» is characteristic of his temperament. Observant
of facts, direct, impartial, clear-sighted, he was disposed
to say what he thought, without enthusiasm and with-
out circumlocution, averse to theory and full of prac-
tical discernment. It is the first work that, going be-
yond the narrow circle of city events, includes the af-
fairs of all the States in an ordered recital, perspicuous
and well proportioned in its parts. Thanks to diligent
study of the sources of history, the author has secured
truth and accuracy; his facts are confirmed according

142 FRANCESCO FLAMIN1

to modern standards; the dignity of ancient historians
is obtained without descent into rhetoric. And it is
not solely a recital of facts ; it is also a historic commen-
tary on the facts themselves. True, it abounds in detail,
causing a prolixity that led Trajano Boccalini to imagine
whimsically that a Spartan criminal, convicted of Use
laconicism, and sentenced to read Guicciardini's descrip-
tion of the war of Pisa, would prefer to be flayed alive.
Moreover, the desire to present his complex observations
in synthetic form induced Guicciardini to use long sen-
tences heavy with gerundive and participial clauses.
But yet the History of Italy, written in noble style and
supplemented with copious notes, is the last and best
development in the field of historiography of that critical
and experimental spirit of the Italians of the Renaissance
of which we have heretofore spoken.

Donate Giannotti should be mentioned with Machia-
velli and Guicciardini. He succeeded the former in the
office of secretary; he also wrote on politics, but was
far inferior to his two great fellow-citizens. He has,
above all, the merit of having critically studied past and
existing systems of government. In his dialogue Delia,
Repubblica de' Veniziam the institutions of the Serenissima
are examined with care; in four books Delia Repubblica
Fiorentina, written soon after the end of the siege of
Florence — for which Giannotti was banished — he criti-
cises the various magistracies of his city, and describes
an ideal form of government, modeled entirely on that
of Venice, which, being mixed, seemed to him such as
to satisfy the aspirations of every class and to hold every
magistrate within the prescribed limits of his authority.
Such a constitution he hoped to see adopted some time
or other by his fellow-citizens; but, instead, he had to
resign himself to live in exile, which he passed mainly
at Rome or in Venetia; he died in 1573, more than eighty
years of age.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 143

These three political writers flourished in the first half
of the sixteenth century; one may say that political sci-
ence, clothed in artistic form, developed during the Re-
naissance in the most democratic of our cities, had
reached the apogee of its splendor in the last years of
the liberty of Florence.

During this period Italy shone in art no less than in
political literature. Of this time are the masterpieces
of Raphael and of Bramante, the paintings, sketches, and
writings, fragmentary but varied and full of thought, of
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who, besides being a
famous and scientific painter, was a writer of most orig-
inal prose, vivid in its descriptions, subtle in its witti-
cisms, moderate and lucid always. Of this time, too, is
the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto.

Ludovico Ariosto was born in 1474 in Reggio Emilia,
where his father, Niccolo, a Ferrarese gentleman, was
captain of the citadel. He studied, mostly in Ferrara,
first law and then letters, and in youth wrote good Latin
verses; but he could not become a perfect humanist, be-
cause, being orphaned in 1500, he had to attend to do-
mestic affairs and enter the service of the Este family.
He was chosen Captain of Canossa; thence in 1503 he
passed into a place of trust in the following of the Car-
dinal Ippolito d'Este, and on account of that prelate,
who cared little for letters, was obliged to betake him-
self with some hardship and danger to Bologna, to Man-
tua, to Milan, to Florence, and many times to Rome.
He put on armor and took part in the war of 1510 against
the Venetians.

But with these various tasks and travels he did not
neglect his literary work, but continued to translate and
imitate in order to form his taste and refine his own
art. Then, in 1517, he freed himself from the annoyance
of being constantly sent post through Italy; he refused
to accompany the Cardinal into Hungary, and was dis-

144 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

t

missed. Then the Duke came to his relief, admitting
him among his pensioners, as camcriere o famihare en-
abling him to stay in his own city and enjoy the tran-
quillity he needed for his work. Inspired by love for a
Florentine widow, Alessandra Benucci, he wrote for her
canzoni, sonnets and elegies.

Notwithstanding his desire for quiet on account of
which the tranquil life attracted him more than the splen-
dors of the courts of Ferrara, of Mantua and of Urbino,
where he had been received with honor, Ariosto had to
take up his travels once more when, in 1522, the ducal
provision for him having been suspended, he was com-
pelled to accept an office especially uncongenial to him,
as he was naturally mild, and by reason of infirm health
had grown old before his time. For more than three
years he remained in Garfagnana as Commissary; there
he had to contend with serious obstacles by reason of
the factions and the banditti that infested the country;
and his literary work was neglected. Finally he was al-
lowed to return to Ferrara; and there he built a little
house in the contrada Mirasole, where he lived with his
wife, the Alessandra spoken of above, and was at liberty
to indulge his thousand joyous fantasies, and carry to
its completion the Orlando Furioso. This poem, partly
written before 1507, was printed at Ferrara in 1516, and
reprinted there with changes in 1521; it had already
been for some time in the hands of the people. But the
author, not satisfied, continued to revise it; and with
several years more of work brought it to the form in
which we have it. Enlarged, it was printed in Ferrara
in OctobeY, 1532; and seven months later, June 6, 1533,
Ariosto died.

Orlando Furioso is the most splendid creation in poetry
of our Renaissance, assimilator and renovator. With it
the epic of chivalry of Italy reaches its height, nor ap-
pears susceptible of further advance.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 145

Ariosto took the material of Boiardo's Orlando Inna-
morato, continuing the story with the same characters.
But he changed the thread of the action to suit himself,
and gave leading parts to Boiardo's secondary charac-
ters, as Ruggiero and Bradamant, whose marriage is
closely connected with the political aim of the Furioso,
that is, with the glorification of the House of Este, cor-»
responding to the apotheosis of the House of Julius in
the JEneid. Moreover, the chief characteristic of Arios-
to's poem is the same as that of Boiardo's — the variety,
by which we see passing across the scene a thousand fan-
tastic creatures; as in a kaleidoscope a countless num-
ber of objects fair to see transform themselves before
our eyes in many-colored figures. But this variety is
accompanied by a certain unity of plan. The struggle
of Christians with Mussulmans, the madness of Orlando
— by which the catastrophe is delayed, as in the Iliad
by the wrath of Achilles — and the loves of Ruggiero, are
three paths which at once offer an entrance into the
forest of romantic incidents. The marriage, which forms
the denouement of the story, is not only foreshadowed
in the course of the poem, but proceeds to accomplish-
ment. There is also a center to the labyrinth of ad-
venture— the two armies confronting each other, from
and to which the Christian and Saracen knights go and
return.

The poem begins with the flight of Angelica, Princess
of Cathay, from the camp of Charlemagne, where she
had been taken by Orlando, nephew of the Emperor and
greatest of the paladins, who loved her ardently. Rinal-
do and Ferrau, following her, engage in a combat; she
flies while they are fighting. Sacripant of Circassia, an-
other of her lovers, induces her to take him for a guide;
but^he is thrown from her saddle by Bradamant, sister
of Rinaldo, who goes about in male attire to search for
Ruggiero, the young Saracen prince, who is dear to her.
10

146 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Bradamant, as modest as she is brave, and Angelica, a
scorner of love amid her crowd of lovers, meet with
many adventures. Angelica is taken from a boat by in-
habitants of Ebuda, who are obliged to offer a woman
every day to Proteus, and is about to be devoured by
an ore, when Ruggiero arrives and saves her by dazzling
the monster with an enchanted shield. He, unmindful
of Bradamant, whose love, however, he returns, would
have lost his heart like so many others to the capricious
pagan, if she had not disappeared from him by means of
a ring that rendered her invisible.

Meanwhile Orlando goes in search of Angelica far
from the Christian camp ; while in Paris, closed by siege,
the champions of the faith are falling by thousands, and
the Saracen Rodomont, forcing his way into the city,
leads the massacre. In the neighborhood of Paris An-
gelica is finally overcome by love when she finds Me-
doro, an obscure soldier but young and beautiful. Or-
lando, becoming aware of this, goes mad, and, terrible
even in his madness, throws into confusion the country
through which he rushes unknown. But the English-
man Astolfo, after miraculous deeds of valor, by divine
grace, ascends to the terrestrial paradise upon a hippo-
griph, learns from St. John the Evangelist of the mad-
ness of the hero, and in company with the saint goes to
recover Orlando's mind from the moon. Thence hav-
ing taken the phial that contains it, he returns to the
earth. Orlando is thrown to the ground with great dif-
ficulty and bound; they make him breathe the contents
of the phial, and he is saved. And so the Christian
world is saved; for the paladin, healed of his insane pas-
sion, kills Agramant and Gradasso, the two most power-
ful Mussulmans, in a fight on the island of -Lipadusa.

But the poem cannot stop there. Bradamant must
marry Ruggiero, converted to Christianity, to found the
family of Este. Upon a rock where he has been thrown

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 147

by shipwreck, Ruggiero consents to be baptized. Yet
another impediment is to be removed — the opposition of
the damsel's parents, who wish her to become a queen
by marrying Leo, son of the Greek Emperor. Then
Leo saves the life of Ruggiero, his rival ; the latter, with
equal generosity, conquers for him Bradamant, whom
Charlemagne was to bestow as a prize of victory on the
one that could vanquish her in a duel ; finally Leo relin-
quishes the maiden when he learns the secret of his
friend; and Ruggiero is made King of the Bulgarians,
who in the march to Constantinople had led to the vic-
tory. At last, when the nuptials are about to be cele-
brated, the hero is challenged to mortal combat by the
powerful Rodomont, who wishes to punish him for his
apostasy ; but Ruggiero conquers and kills him, securing,
together with his own felicity, the triumph of the Chris- /
tians.

Upon this plot are grafted innumerable episodes. The
marvelous is introduced freely, and often used with
force and subtlety, as in the description of the struggle
of Orlando against the ore, and the account of the kill-
ing of the giant Orrilo. The many characters are well
delineated and distinguished the one from the other.
Among the women the two warriors, Bradamant and
Marphisa, are most prominent. But there are not lacking
women with the physical and mental fragility of the sex
— more human, therefore artistically better: Olympia,
loving with the ardor of self-sacrifice the unworthy Bi-
reno, who has abandoned her on a desert island ; Isabella,
escaping from the violence of Rodomont, and by a strata-
gem procuring her own death at the hands of her bestial
and credulous lover; Flordelice who, after lamenting the
death of her Brandimart in one of the most affecting
passages of the poem, has a cell built for herself in her
husband's tomb, and shuts herself up in it, insatiable
with weeping. Ariosto knew the human heart to its

14$ FRANCESCO FLAMINI

depths, and represents it faithfully even in the midst of
the most extravagant inventions. The madness, grandly
epic, of the most valiant and magnanimous of his char-
acters breaks out with titanic force after a succession
of psychic emotions most faithfully represented.

Other characters attract our attention no less than
the hero — Charlemagne and Rinaldo, Astolfo and Rug-
giero. Charlemagne, whom Pulci burlesqued, recovers
in the Furioso the dignity he had in the Chanson de
Roland; he is again an exemplary monarch, and is faith-
fully obeyed. Rinaldo, the rebel paladin, no longer re-
sists the will of his king in Ariosto's poem. Astolfo
preserves much of the gay and reckless character at-
tributed to him by tradition, but is ennobled by the
prodigies he performs. And finally Ruggiero, archetype
of the perfect knight, recalls Virgil's pins JEncas, to
whom he is closely akin also by his part in the plot of the
poem. As to the Saracen cavaliers — Agramant, Gradasso,
Rodomont, Ferrau, Mandricardo, and others — Ariosto, in
the Christian spirit of the Crusades, exhibits them in
a bad light ; Rodomont is a brute, comic at times, despite
his leonine force; Mandricardo is a robber, perfidious
and cruel.

Naturally, not all the interminable array of incidents
and achievements that Ariosto recounts were originated
in his own brain; he took from two classes of sources
freely and often simultaneously — the romantic and the
classic. Among the former, the poem of Boiardo and
two voluminous French romances by Elia di Boron upon
Guiron the courteous and upon Tristan (Roman de Bret)
aided him most; more rarely he made use of the ro-
mance of Launcelot; and some ideas and incidents were
drawn from the Mambriano of Francesco, the blind man
of Ferrara — a feeble and prolix poem, written between
1490 and 1496, the best parts of which are the tales in-
serted here and there — and a Spanish romance circulated

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 149

among us quite largely in the sixteenth century, Tirante
el Blanco. But he is much more indebted to classic an-
tiquity, the jiEneid, the Tlwbaid, the Metamorphoses, and
other works, with the Latin elegists and prose writers,
with Horace, with Ovid, even with Manilius. Everyone
knows, for example, that the episode of Cloridano and
Medoro is taken from Virgil's of Euryalus and Nisus,
and from a passage in Statius; that the procession of
the shades of future Estes is imitated from that of the
illustrious Romans in the JEneid; and that Alcina re-
sembles Circe in the Odyssey.

Yet, in imitating, Ariosto retouched and remade, im-
pressing the seal of his own genius on what he received
from others, giving aesthetic value to what in his pred-
ecessors had been merely pleasing; in fine, transmuting,
by the magic of art and style, the exotic Carolingian and
Breton material into a work all Italian, classic. The
classicism, shown in the title, corresponding to Seneca's
tragedy, Hercules Furens, in the propositions and invoca-
tions, and in the close, where even to the words the
JEneid is imitated, is the most eminent characteristic of
the Furioso. The author wishes to approach Homer and
Virgil; hence the greater seriousness of his poem com-
pared with the preceding poems of the same class, not
excluding the Innamorato. Therefore he contents him-
self with merriment a little malicious at times, but never
scurrilous; he does not wish to parody the sentiment
of chivalry, as does Cervantes in Don Quixote; on the
contrary, it is dear to him. And, in the manner of the
ancient epic poets, Jie narrates _objectiyely7...as_ if from
the outside, aiming only to delight the sensitive reader's
aesthetic taste; because art is with him an end unto it-
self. A wave of imagination, running through the Fu-
rioso, passes by us, tossing before the eyes of the fancy
with iridescent changes of color and delightful harmo-
nies of sound. Nor can it be said that the practice of

•

150 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

letting go one thread of the story to take up or retake
another, causes annoyance to the reader, because the
transitions are natural and subtle, and so multifold,
akin, and necessary to the development of the story as
to add to the harmony of the whole. Again, to the thou-
sand fantasies and figures of the romantic world, inti-
mately classic as he is in temperament and objective
imagination, he gives plastic relief and clear outline.
From the classics, too, he derives the exquisite mastery
of style — that fluid spontaneity, not unaccompanied by
the most chastened eloquence because it is the fruit of
assiduous labor in revising and polishing.

Such a poem, admirable furthermore by its pure Tus-
can, ductile and rich, and by the freedom and perfect
construction of the octaves, superior even to Politian's,
naturally was translated very soon into various idioms,
taken as a model for numerous other poems, and imi-
tated by noted foreigners. In the romantic epic Ariosto
left far behind him both predecessors and imitators. For,
if Boiardo had already carried to the last degree the
natural and spontaneous development of this class of
poetry, it is the praise of the author of the Furioso to
have brought into that field the fruits of his studies of
the great works of the classic world. By reason of this,
his poem may be said to be an epitome of the Italian
Renaissance, essentially artistic, as Dante's Commedia was
the fullest expression of our Middle Ages, essentially
psychologic. Ariosto is perhaps nearest to Dante among
our writers for loftiness of genius, although they took
diverse and almost opposite ways; for the one is the se-
vere and reflective poet of ultramundane ideality, the
other the gay and careless singer of the real world ; the
one inspired Michelangelo, the other was a model of
style to Galileo.

While all Europe admired the Furioso, and our works of
art educated the taste of foreigners, Italy continued to

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 151

receive inestimable benefits from the culture of its other
cities. Venice and Rome were the literary centers of
the civilized world.

In Venice art and learning joined hands, and, together
with the masterpieces of a Carpaccio, a Giorgione, a
Titian, revealed masterpieces of another kind from the
ancient world. From the press of Aldus Manutius of
Sermoneta were issued nearly all the Greek writers, in
convenient form, with clear-cut lettering. The learned
of all parts of Europe corresponded with Manutius, who
was an able philologist; among his correspondents were
Ariosto, Politian, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. The Acad-
emy of the Philhellenes — called Aldine from his name
— boasted notable Greek scholars. Pietro Bembo, who
when young had gone to Messina to study Greek under
Constantine Lascaris, was among the cooperators and
friends of Manutius.

At Rome Leo X, enamored of the Hellenic world, pro-
tected Aldus and confided to Giovanni Lascaris, great-
est of the Byzantine scholars that came among us at that
time, the instruction of the Greek youths lodged in a
college opposite the Quirinal. But the Romans, though
awake to the glories of Hellas, did not forget their own.
The pontificate of Leo X was the heroic period of the
contest in Rome between the partisans and the opponents
of the Ciceronian style. A Frenchman from Belgium,
Christophe Longueil (Longolius), gained at that time
great reputation, increased by the dispute he held with
a young Roman patrician, a jealous guardian of his
country's dignity; and after he had become a perfect
imitator of Cicero, he was a mark for the censure of
those who, like the great Erasmus, favored a freer and
more varied style. But they were few in Italy. Jacopo
Sadoleto, of Modena, Pontifical Secretary, then Bishop
of Carpentras and Cardinal, was an elegant Ciceronian
Latinist; Lazzaro Bonamico, professor at Padua, pre-

152 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

ferred being a Ciceronian to being king or pope. The
attention paid to rhetorical studies on Latinity diverted
our humanists from philological work, which would
otherwise have been fruitful.

Naturally this beginning favored the rise and growth
of the Academies. The one in Rome, instituted in the
previous century by Pomponio Leto, a Calabrian, who
was a lecturer on eloquence in the Studio and an ardent
admirer of classic antiquity, was revived and numbered
noble minds among its members. At Florence the Pla-
tonic Academy had given place to the gatherings in the
gardens of the Rucellai (Orti Oricellari). In Naples
the Pontanian Academy kept up the classic tradition.
All this was favorable to antiquarian investigation, and
the Italians, their minds full of memories of Rome, be-
gan to search for statues, medallions, coins, and inscrip-
tions. The nuclei of our museums and libraries date
from that time ; the Vatican was much enriched, thanks
to its learned popes and munificent donors ; the Marciana
of Venice was moved to a more fitting site ; the library
gathered from the Medicean collections by the care of
Leo X, placed in the cloister of San Lorenzo in Florence,
became the Laurenzian. And our Universities, especial-
ly Padua and Bologna, drew to their halls famous teach-
ers and thousands of pupils, even foreigners. Nor were
the professorships of Italy sufficient for the many learned
teachers. At the Sorbonne of Paris, and later at the
College of France, instituted by Francis I, Italian pro-
fessors instilled a love for classic antiquity and taught
every branch of known science.

The progress of the study of classic languages and
literature was attended by imitations in Latin, more ex-
tensive and in general better understood. In long poems,
like that of Giambattista Spagnoli (Baptista Mantuanus) ,
attempts were made to adapt a classic dress to Christian
subjects. Sannazzaro, in De partu Virginis, aimed to «K

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 153

noble the Gospel account of the Incarnation by investing
it with the purest forms of Greek and Roman art. The
first example of the true Christian epic is the Christias,
by Girolamo Vida (i4QO?-i566), of Cremona, apostolic
prothonotary and afterward Bishop of Alba. In its six
books he celebrates the entire work of Redemption, tak-
ing the material from the Evangelists and the form from
Virgil. Without poetic inspiration Vida was elegant and
accomplished. Aonio Paleario, of Veroli, deserves to be
remembered with him for a philosophic poem in the
manner of Lucretius, De Immortalitate Animorum. He
is celebrated also for the tragic end to which he was
brought by his religious ideas. Our writers of the six-
teenth century had incredible facility in Latin poetry.
In 1570 Adamo Fumano, of Verona, wrote a treatise on
logic in Latin hexameters. Another Veronese, Doctor
Girolamo Fracastoro, sang, with elegant conceits and in
irreproachable Latin, of the origin and spread of an un-
clean contagion that broke out in Italy at the close of
the fifteenth century, and of the remedies for it, in his
Syphilis. Pier Angelo Manzolli, of La Stellata (Mar-
cellus Palingenius), alone had an eye to matter rather
than form in Zodiacus viicc a long philosophic-didactic
poem. He gave to his Latin the flexibility of a living
tongue, and by this, as well as by allegorical symbolism,
and certain heterodox opinions, he attained to great^
celebrity, especially outside of Italy.

But our Latinists of that time succeeded better in the
simpler forms of poetry than in epics. Vida has some
that are fine — Scacchia Litdiis. on the game of chess, and
Bombycorwn Libri Duo, on the silk-worm. Lyric poetry
was cultivated throughout Italy still more largely and
felicitously. In this the favorite measures were the epi-
grammatic, adapted for use, often improvisations, in court
society, and the elegiac, which, especially in such hands
as Ariosto's or Sannazzaro's best served for the sincere

154 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

expression of amorous sentiment. Bembo seems elegant
but cold in his songs. On the other hand, those of Berni
have warmth and spontaneity. In the Lusits of Andrea
Navagero, a Venetian, there is often simplicity and a
bitter perfume. Some of the songs of Giovanni Cotta,
of Legnano, are palpitating with passion. Surpassing all
others in Latin lyric poetry is Marcantonio Flaminio, of
Serravalle in the Trivigiano, author of eight books of
songs, a man of fine genius and warm heart, universally
loved and admired. His work has something of the
Raphaelesque in design and color; the epitaphs on Jella
(Hyella) a young girl who died of disappointed love, are
among the tenderest things of the time. They may be
classed with an exquisite domestic idyl of Fracastoro,
a beautiful elegy of Castiglione, and with the Aquarum
Ctmcentus of Antonio Telesio of Cosenza, author of other
poems inspired by family affection and love of nature.

This original poetic work in Latin of the first decade
of the sixteenth century has real and great importance.
For, while a myriad of its cultivators swarmed in Rome,
the literary mart, in the shadow of the Papal Curia, and,
as Flaminio says, the new Catulli, Horatii and Virgilii
were multiplied in the rest of Italy, others beyond the
Alps were inspired by our books and literati, and all Eu-
rope joined in the work of imitation.

But the scholars that versified in the ancient language
no longer disdained the modern, as in the preceding cen-
tury. One of the most distinguished, Pietro Bembo
(1470-1547), recalled the Italians to the study of the lan-
guage of Petrarch and Boccaccio. As an heir of Politiait,
he continued the union, favored by Politian, of Platonic
humanism with vernacular literature. Bembo, a patri-
cian of Venice, not only applied himself to spread the
study and the love of Italian at Ferrara, Urbino, Rome
and Padua, where he resided successively ; not only gave
a perfect example of the literary idiom in Asolani and

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 155

in the Rime, but developed his teachings upon the sub-
ject in an able treatise, the result of long reflection,
Prose delta Volgar Lingua (1525). The first two books of
this dialogue contain a demonstration of the excellence
of the Italian language, a brief history of its origin, and
its literary annals, and intimations of the models to be
followed in writing it. The third book, more extended,
sets forth the rules of Italian grammar. The funda-
mental idea is that the language of the three great Flor-
entines of the trecento, particularly Petrarch's, should
be adopted as the standard.

The Prose became a standard, and it was followed
by those who comprehended that a regular literary idiom
must be established "out of the popular usage." Ariosto
changed the language of his poem according to the forms
given it in Bembo's book. In 1539 Bembo was made
Cardinal, and when he died rumor had it that he was
destined for the apostolic chair. Recommended by the
authority of such a man, the Petrarchian idiom gathered
into a whole the mingled forms of dialect elements in
use through northern and central Italy, and established
the linguistic course of the whole century. But there
were also adherents of opposing opinions. Thus Bal-
dassare Castiglione in his Cortegiano counseled writers
to use "not pure antique Tuscan, but common Italian,"
which is heard from the mouths of "men noble and
trained in courts." And Giangiorgio Trissino (1478-
1550), a learned patrician of Vicenza, adopting the opin-
ion of Dante, that our literary language should be the
quintessence of Italian dialects, maintains in his dia-
logue, // Castdlano, the existence of a language "elect
and illustrious" for use in writing — Italian, and not Tus-
can. But contrary to that view, which is ably opposed
by Machiavelli in a "Dialogue concerning Language,"
written language was unified in Italy as Bembo wished
it to be, that is, in the mould of the Tuscan.

156 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Orthography also, which had been uncertain and
Latinized, gradually became uniform in the sixteenth
century. The idea of reforming it came from Trissino,
who thought to remove ambiguity in writing, most an-
noying to the non-Tuscans, by adopting some letters
from the Greek alphabet. Naturally this proposal and
others similar to it were not acceptable, rather were the
signal for a grand battle upon the name to be given the
vernacular. But Claudio Tolomei, of Siena, a man of
fine linguistic sense, repudiating those means of phonetic
representation, accepted the idea of renovating the or-
thography. He held that the signs no longer corre-
sponding to sounds should be eliminated, and rightly
proposed to write vizio, kzione, ninfe, etc., in place of viiio,
lettione, nimphe. The dispute upon the name of the lan-
guage was not in vain; from it came corroboration of
the opinion of Bembo, the contending parties coming to
an agreement with mutual concessions. For the Tus-
cans, who would have wished to impose the existing
usage of the cultured in their province upon the literati
of all Italy as their guide in writing, saved their amour
proprc in the adoption of the language of Petrarch and
Boccaccio. On the other hand, the Italians of the other
provinces did not abandon their prerogative by recogniz-
ing a common patrimony, a language in literary use, de-
voted for centuries to writing in works most admirable
and familiar to every one.

The three great authors being thus established as
standards of language, Italian grammar was easily set-
tled. The lexicon, too, could be in process of establish-
ment; our first dictionaries are largely destitute of sci-
entific value. The unification of the written language
was the best fruit of the humanistic culture, as of the
thought and the art of the Renaissance were the writings
of Machiavelli and the poem of Ariosto. Bembo, a
humanist, was the standard-bearer; and the literary Ian-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 157

guage grew to unity, being modeled upon the master-
pieces of trecento Tuscans, because they appeared to
reflect in the best manner possible the features of the
language of Latium.

CHAPTER VI
THE CLASSIC AGE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE

^^•rHE evolution of the Renaissance, after the mar-

/ I ve*s °* art an(^ tnougnt of its latest years —
^^^ about 1530 to 1560 — gave rise to copious liter-
ary production according to the aesthetic stan-
dards and in the idiom fixed by the later humanists.
The unity in classicism of form and in Italianity of lan-
guage conduces, as Carducci observes, "to the ultimate
perfecting of every anterior class of production yet living
or vital."

In narrative poetry many followed— or, to speak more
precisely, dragged along painfully — in the footsteps of
Ariosto. The adventures of Orlando were re-sung from
one end of Italy to the other; Ruggiero, Rinaldo and
Marphisa and other of the characters of the Furioso each
became the protagonist of similar poems; the imitation
of Ariosto was even united with that of Dante; some,
in fine, sought novelty in the fantastic and the bizarre.
Even the Angelica Innamorata of Count Brusantini, of
Ferrara, more successful than others, is a miserable pro-
duction. The romance of chivalry, grown stupid and
pretentious, was parodied, and deserved to be. The
Orlandino of Pietro Aretino is a disgusting caricature;
and beside the epics of cavaliers and paladins flourished
burlesque narrative poetry in macaronic jargon.

Of the poesia maccheronica the first experiments in Italy

158 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

did not rise above the Macaronea of the Paduan Tifi
Odasi (died in 1492). This poem aims to amuse, throw-
ing in amid its barbarous Latin a number of Italian
or rather Latinized dialect words. But it is often satiric
also. Thus in the loose verses of the poem of Odasi, as
well as in another, anonymous, which takes us into the
midst of the student life of Padua, a merry company
lives again for us, like that which in the fifteenth century
gathered in Florence at the shop of Burchiello. Personal
satire has a part in the works of the greatest among
the macchcronici, Merlin Cocai. Teofilo Folengo, who
used that pseudonym, was a Benedictine friar of Mantua ;
but he had studied at Bologna, and, following old student
traditions, he laid the scene of his best poem, Baldus,
amid the reckless gayeties of the students of that Univer-
sity. It is the epic of the macaronic jargon. Having
read the Furioso, the author, who, in the first edition
(1517) held himself in restraint, gave the action much
greater fulness and used greater care in representing his
characters. These are all comic degenerates from the
types of the romances of chivalry. Fracasso is modeled
on Morgante, and Cingar on Margutte. Baldo, the hero,
is a mixture of heroism and knavery. In the twenty-
five books of his poem, Folengo relates the exploits of
this hero in city and country and in the imaginary world
of romantic adventure, and succeeds in a felicitous parody
of chivalric matter and Virgilian epic form. It is known
that Rabelais took from Baldus, fictions, anecdotes, and
tricks of style.

To Folengo we owe also a caricature of pastoral poe-
try, the Zanitonella, a book allegorico-symbolic, of mixed
prose and verse, in Italian, Latin, and macaronic jargon,
also the Caos del Triperuno, and two comico-heroic poems,
Moschaea, singing in three books the victory of the ants
over the flies, and Orlandino in ottava rima, essentially
burlesque, but with many thrusts at the clergy. But the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 159

comico-heroic poem, to be artistically developed in the
next century, was now but just born. In the middle of
the sixteenth century, the first steps were taken by seek-
ing the comic in the monstrous, and to this were adapted
the meter and movement of the epic of chivalry; the
best example of it is the Gigantea of Girolamo Amelonghi,
called the Hunchback of Pisa.

Over against the poems after the manner of Ariosto
and the parodies, stands the serious epic in classic style,
inaugurated by Trissino. This learned gentleman, an
aristocrat in art as well, did not think it worth while
to waste time on a work like the Furioso, designed only
to please the unlearned. He therefore attempted to en-
rich the nation with a real epic on the classic model. In
The Deliverance of Italy from the Goths he developed a plot
unique and comprehensive, on the lines of Homer and
according to the rules of Aristotle — the expulsion of the
Ostrogoths from Italy by Belisarius. But he was de-
ficient in imagination, inspiration, and that sentiment of
the fitting which is indispensable to all poetry, most of
all to the heroic. Further, he aimed to gain the applause
of the erudite by minute description, as he himself says,
of "armor, palaces, castrametation." Hence it follows
that The Deliverance of Italy is most arid and heavy. Its
dulness is increased by the measure, which is the blank
verse without variety of pause and accent, and the lan-
guage, feeble and uniform from the effort at dignity.

Trissino's poem, from which he expected great fame,
soon fell into oblivion. The sixteenth-century epics
nearly all followed in the way opened by Ariosto; and,
like the singer of Orlando, Luigi Alamanni brought the
romantic poem near to the type of the classic epic in
Girone il Cortese, which is a paraphrase in octaves of the
French romance in prose of the same name, and in
Avarchidc, so called from Avaricum, Bourges, the city
where the scene is laid. This also is in octaves and re-

160 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

produces the plot and incidents of the Iliad, with changes
only of names of places and characters. These poems,
especially the second, follow the precepts of Aristotle
and restore the knights of the Breton cycle to the per-
fection they had before Boiardo. The author aims at
the dignity of the heroic epic; but without reaching it
departs, prolix and monotonous, from the fascinating
variety of the romances of chivalry.

But that variety characterizes the Amadigi of Bernardo
Tasso (1493-1569), of Bergamo, father of the immortal
Torquato. It is a free imitation of the Spanish romance
Amadis de Gaul, which, for the novelty of the subject, the
unity of action, the moral aim and the classic element
abounding in it, was approved by our literati. Tasso
first intended to write an epic poem after the manner of
Trissino in blank verse, which, like the Odyssey and the
Mneid, should contain "a perfect exploit of one man;"
but afterward, convinced that only the kind of poetry
raised to perfection by Ariosto could please his con-
temporaries, and placing pleasure much above usefulness
as an object of epic poetry, he wrote a poem simply
romantic, in ottava rivna, where an excessive number of
episodes are woven into the story of the enterprises of
the hero, Amadis, with continuous luxuriance of imagi-
nation and style. Three plots proceed simultaneously in
its hundred cantos — the loves of Amadis and Oriana, of
Alidoro and Mirinda, and of Floridante and Filidora.
The first was taken from the Spanish source; the other
two were original, the last being mostly allegorical.
Such multiplicity and exuberance of the marvelous made
the Amadis, unlike Trissino's Deliverance of Italy, uni-
versally popular, though it is not free from verbose
slovenliness of style, nor from typical abstractions in its
characters.

With similar designs, Giambattista Giraldi took a way
somewhat diverse. He set forth his theories in a Dis-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 161

course on the Composing of Romances (1554). He was of
opinion that in poetic narrative one should follow in the
steps of Boiardo and Ariosto, but with a moral aim and
in a style of heroic dignity. He cited the Furioso as a
model for those undertaking to sing many actions of
many personages, a class of epic unknown to the an-
cients, but justified by the authority of famous modern
authors; but he judged that the epics of the Greeks and
Latins should be followed by a poem narrating a single
action of one man, not following the example of those
who, without daring "to put a foot outside the footprints
of others," wished "to include all the writers of romances
under the laws of art given us by Aristotle and by
Horace, not considering that neither of them knew this
language and this class of composition." For his part,
Giraldi took a middle course, choosing in his Hercules
as a subject "many actions of one hero" ; and, in accord-
ance with his idea of a moral aim, transmuting the
strongest of the demigods into a perfect knight, and in-
troducing into the myths incidents purely romantic. He
succeeded only in making a hodge-podge in slovenly oc-
taves. The same may be said of the Costantc, by Fran-
cesco Bolognetti, upon the enterprises of the ancestor of
Constantine, where the same standards are followed, ex-
cept that he makes use of history instead of mythology.
But, though Trissino failed in his attempt to bring the
classic epic back to life, this very departure inaugurated
by Giraldi, aiming to adapt epic regularity to the ro-
mance of chivalry, gathering the scattered threads around
one event or one character, was carried out in the great
Italian heroic poem, Gcrusalemme libcrata ("Jerusalem
Delivered").

As Ariosto gave the law for the epic to the Italians
of the sixteenth century, so Petrarch for the lyric; and
though he never had been neglected as a model for imi«
II

162 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tators, they turned to him with renewed ardor after the
example of Bembo.

Pietro Bembo had begun life as a court poet, writing
strambotti for illustrious ladies, sonnets on trivial sub-
jects, jests for the entertainment of society, verses de-
signed to celebrate the carnival at court. But after 1513
— that is, after he was chosen Pontifical Secretary and
was in receipt of a good income — he changed his stan-
dards and aims in art, together with his mode of life.
Far from the frivolous and gallant society which he no
longer had need to please, he abandoned the court
poetry in which he had aped the improvisatori dear to
the people, and, aiming solely to make his own the ex-
quisite form of Petrarch's lyric, employed himself in
patiently polishing his verses, which he deemed the more
perfect as they approached more nearly to those of the
poet whom, as we have seen, he proposed as a model in
language.

The reformation effected in lyric poetry by this man
of high authority had extraordinary success. Great
numbers followed in his steps; so throughout Italy can-
zonieri were written in the purest literary idiom, with
most correct Petrarchism, in the measures consecrated
by the example of the bard of Laura. Improvised novel-
ty was no longer sought, but careful polish, elegance la-
boriously acquired. The distinction between the poetry
of the people and the poetry of art, which had grown far
too slight in the preceding century, was now reestab-
lished. The populace still had their poets, some of whom
deserve mention, as Giovanni Battista Verini, of Florence,
and Baldassarre Olimpo, of the Alessandri of Sassofer-
rato; but cultured men who wrote verses as a literary
exercise or a pastime, took the way indicated by the
dictator of sane literary taste. In Venice, Bembo's
country, there were naturally the most ardent "Bem-
bists ;" nevertheless the mania for Petrarchism extended

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 163

throughout Italy. And, since it is much easier to follow
a model than to evolve from one's own brain, and the
ambition to pass as a litterateur may be a stimulus to
verse-writing no less powerful than the hope of lucre,
the horde of poetasters increased beyond measure in
every class and quality of society. They had the "re-
ceipt" of poetry from Petrarch; they compiled ccntoni of
verses after the great trecentist; the canzonicre was
spiritualized; to the rhymes on the life and death of
Madonna Laura, corresponded harmonies in the name
of the Madonna herself; and the expositions, the com-
ments, and the academic lectures on one or another of
the poems were multiplied.

This lyric poetry was all, from first to last, an affecta-
tion. Men who in real life loved quite differently, as-
sumed in their poetry the attitude of the purest Plato-
nism ; hence a coldness and consequent monotony, atoned
for neither by the elegance of the style, nor by the melody
of the verse. The artificiality is often apparent; for the
false in art is not only cold but forced. Thus Angelo
di Costanzo, a Neapolitan, adopted in part the manner
of Cariteo, but with more elegance; his epigrammatic
sonnets were found charming by the Arcadians. Ber-
nardina Rota, another Neapolitan, is hyperbolic and in-
flated, except in the verses in memory of his wife. Not
altogether free from the same faults was another South-
erner, Luigi Tansillo of Venosa (1510-1568). Yet, as he
had to leave his studies at an early age and take part
in military operations and sea-voyages as a gentleman
of the guard of honor of the Viceroy of Naples, he could
not acquire too much learning nor clip the wings of his
genius; but, instead took his inspiration from the varied
events of which he was a part, and listened to the voices
of Nature, the mother of enthusiasm. His eclogue The
Two Pilgrims, is still a school exercise; but in the im-
moral poem 77 Vendemmiatore ("The Vintager"), published

164

in 1532, is perceived the poet of facile and fluent talent.
Later, during his wandering life, he gave greater evi-
dence of the sincerity and spontaneity of his art in verses
where, amid the commonplaces of Petrarchian imita-
tion, are found fresh and original descriptions, accents
of passion, poetic flashes of Platonism.

Still another Southerner, Galeazzo di Tarsia, born in
Naples of a noble family of Cosenza, deserves praise as
a lyrist. He, like Tansillo, was a soldier as well as poet ;
he died young in 1553. Together with some rhymes in
the manner of Petrarch, mostly in praise of Vittoria
Colonna, he has three sonnets of real inspiration on the
death of his wife. Others attempted novelty in other
ways. Thus Giovanni della Casa enveloped his thought,
almost always tenuous or fine-spun, in a mantle of pom-
posity, breaking the syntactical connection within his
lines and carrying it on from one line to another, and
giving them a dignified movement and sonorous redun-
dancy.

Claudio Tolomei and his followers added new metrical
forms adapted from classic meters. In Rules of the New
Tuscan Poetry (1539) Tolomei labors fruitlessly to estab-
lish for our prosody norms analogous to those of. the
Latins. With better success Trissino introduced the
use of verso sciolto, or blank verse, a form that seems fit-
ting especially for versions of Greek and Latin poems.
The translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Giovanni
Andrea Dell' Anguillara, of Sutri, is in octaves; but the
famous version of the JEncid made by Annibal Caro in
the last years of his life, in which he shows, as he pur-
posed to do, the strength and richness of our language,
is in blank verse. Bernardo Tasso, too, was felicitous,
not only in the odes in short strophes of hendecasyllables
and septenaries, which he composed in imitation of
Horace, but in the selve (poetic miscellanies) of hendeca-
syllables freely rhymed here and there, and in his ele-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 165

gies in tersa rima. Of these last, Ariosto has some that
are really beautiful.

Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554), a Paduan lady, is an
exception among the innumerable women that wrote
rhymes in the sixteenth century. She wrote under the
impulse of real passion; and in the Cansonierc, which
is a diary of her love for Count Collaltino di Collalto, of
Treviso, she atones for the conventionalism of the form
by the lively and sincere expression of affection. All the
others seem either cold or affected. Veronica da Gam-
bara, the noble lady that married Giberto X, Signore of
Correggio, wrote poetry as a literary exercise, not as a
necessity of imagination or emotion. Her rhymes are
indeed read by some, and they are of the most elegant
among those produced by the feminine mus.e, but are de-
ficient in warmth and life.

Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), daughter of Fabrizio
Colonna, the famous captain, and Agnese di Montefeltro,
was born at Marino, a castle belonging to her family.
She became famous beyond all other women of the time.
In the verses in which she laments for her husband, Don
Ferrante d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, idealizing him,
she has some original passages and some scintillae of
sentiment.

The larger part of the exquisite Canzonicre is all on
religious subjects. In her later years she lived retired
in claustral austerity. As to the other women that wrote
verses in that century, their work reads as if it were
all from the same pen; nor can that of the honorable
wife or maiden be distinguished from that of the cour-
tesan.

Tullia d'Aragona, a very celebrated hetaira, more cul-
tured than beautiful, wrote a canzonlcrc full of feigned
ardors and simulated jealousies, with Platonic ideas, fur-
ther set forth in her dialogue Ddl' hifinita d'Amorc, which

166 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

was dedicated to the Duchess Eleonora de' Medici by
her permission.

In a single lyric poet of the sixteenth century thought
and form were united in expression highly original.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great architect, was unlike
any other even in his poetry. His country, his religion,
and a tender friendship for Vittoria Colonna inspired
verses full of ideality and of force, which here and there
recall his profound admiration for Dante. Among his
poems on political subjects, the epigram on the statue
of Night in San Lorenzo (1545) is celebrated. It is to
be regretted that he had not facility of expression equal
to his vigor of conception, and that too often he sacrificed
elegance and harmony to the desire for restraint and
strength. Even without that, we may hail him as a true
poet. He rises in every way above the crowd of Pe-
trarchian followers, the infinite number of rhymers —
"noble, or illustrious, or most excellent" — who defile be-
fore us in the anthology of the sixteenth century. All
follow the current fashion, except that some occasional
solitary anti-petrarchist — not to speak of the burlesque
writers — stands opposed to it.

The scrmone, assuming the name and often also the
character of satire, is some relief from the monotony of
the amorous lyric. The satire of the sixteenth century
doubtless received an impulse from the new studies of
Horace and Juvenal, but it bears a close relation to the
didactic-satiric discourse of the fifteenth century. In
fact, it moralized from the beginning with Antonio Vin-
ciguerra, whose satires are the first that saw the light
among us (1495). If a little later, Italian satire, from
being harsh as it was, became sportive and mordant, it
was due to the influence of the burlesque poetry akin to
it. In preceding centuries the gnomic and the burlesque
were united in that special form of poetry that we call
familiar or bourgeois. Vinciguerra is related to the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 167

gnomics of the fourteenth century; Berni and the Ber-
nisto, of whom we shall speak, to Pucci, Burchiello and
Pistoia. Classic satire, however, received much of its
material from a poetic patrimony of which a part borders
on jocose poetry.

Such material is not very rich or varied. The devasta-
tion of Italian lands by foreigners inspired feeble lamen-
tations in Tansillo and Ercole Bentivoglio (died in 1573),
a patrician of Bologna; but it would be vain to seek in
the satires of the sixteenth century for important allu-
sions to the condition of oppressed Italians. The best
in it refers to the papacy. Thus in the verses where
Ariosto represents the nepotism and the extortions of
Alexander VI, runs a murmur of indignation; on the
other hand, the description that Caporali gives of the
golden pontificate of Leo X is pleasant and witty. Berni,
prince of burlesque writers and at the same time vigorous
satirist, expresses effectively the wrath and grief of the
Italians at the raising of Adrian VI, a foreigner, to the
Papal chair. The satire of the century turns oftener
upon two other themes. The corruption of the cloister,
as it was the subject for banter in burlesque poetry, in
novels, in popular satire, lyric and dramatic, so in cul-
tured satire it gave occasion to frequent hints and di-
rect thrusts. Likewise woman, who by the writers of
that age was more and more cast down from the pedestal
upon which the Platonism of lyric poetry had placed her
as a goddess, had to take her seat upon the stool of the
culprit before the tribunal of satire. All that our satirists
of the sixteenth century wrote about women was derived
from the misogynic sixth satire of Juvenal, either di-
rectly or through the satire of Ariosto upon the choice
of a wife.

Despite this poverty of content, the satire of the great
century was liked outside of Italy and had imitators in
France and England; in France, rather, it was directly

168 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

appropriated by Jean Vauquelin. In fact, it cannot be
said to be destitute of artistic value. Ariosto, who in
the Furioso has passages of vis comica in the manner of
Aristophanes, keeps in his satires the sportiveness that
is so fascinating in the epic, while giving to the verse a
character of greater gravity, and using, instead of the
flexible Ottawa, the terza rima, as more appropriate to this
style of composition. They are, indeed, better than sat-
ires; they are intimate epistolary confidences, made up
of little incidents, while they open a window into the
poet's inner life, and bring before us the times and the
customs amid which he lived.

Pietro Nelli, a subtle Sienese, in his Satire alia carlona
("Random Satires"), shows himself an heir to the popu-
lar satire and to the mordant fabliaux, in that he lashes
the minor clergy, and penetrates to the secrets of the
cloister. Cesare Caporali, of Perugia, who flourished
in the second half of the century, re-clothed in graceful
style the satire of fable and fantasy in some verses in
tercets — // viaggio di Parnaso ("The Parnassian Journey),
Gli avvisi di Parnaso ("The News from Parnassus"), Le
osequie di Mecenate, La vita di Mecenate, Gli Orti di Mecenate
("The Obsequies, Life, Gardens of Maecenas").

Tansillo, in his Capitoli, also in terza rima, sometimes
approaches the style of Ariosto's satires, sometimes the
spirit and manner of Berni. Choosing the best of the
satire of his time, he gives a garb of graceful merriment
to the subjects of burlesque. Lastly, Ludovico Paterno,
of Naples, wrote satires in octaves and in blank verse, in
which the art is mediocre, the sentiment sincere.

More important than the satiric is the burlesque poe-
try. Among its writers Berni was, in his class, a true
poet.

Francesco Berni (1497 or 8-1535) was born at Lam-
porecchio, in Val di Nievole, of a Florentine family. He
was brought up and educated in Florence, and hence is

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 169

to be regarded as legitimate heir to the traditions of
Pucci and Burchiello. In his version of Boiardo's Or-
lando Innamorato, written with the design of rendering
the form Tuscan and the matter more edifying, he lets
us know that he went to Rome at nineteen; that there
he was successively in the service of Cardinal Bibbiena,
his kinsman, of the prothonotary Angelo Dovizi, of the
papal datary Matteo Giberti, and of Cardinal Ippolito
de' Medici; and that he enlivened the joyous leisure of
the prelate with his jests. The Capitolo, in tcrza rima,
was then in use for erotic poetry. Berni turned it into
burlesque, celebrating the nonsensical and the low, his
agile mind finding matter for mock praise in whatever
appealed least to the sense of the beautiful or praise-
worthy. Moreover, the greater part of his Capitoli is
marred by blemishes of obscene doublc-entcndre. There
is less of this taint in those directed to friends, which
have the familiar tone of Horatian epistles, and a ter-
nario to Fracastoro is free from it. In this he takes up
an old theme, the description of a ruinous and filthy
house, and turns it over with new variations, in a style
now epic and now elegiac, but always unspeakably gro-
tesque. This and other subjects familiar in our comic
poetry, already given artistic dress by Pistoia, are treated
with great skill by Berni. He had much greater dexterity
in parody than the parodists of the fifteenth century;
for an idea of his manner, one may read that famous
sonnet on the beauty of the beloved lady, where he
ridicules the traditional type of feminine beauty, spoiled
by the hands of so many clumsy Petrarchists. Berni
was vigorous in invective; his sonnets, often codati ("in
series"), castigate the scoundrelism and the overbearing
demeanor of the gentry most fiercely.

Anton Francesco Grazzini, called // Lasca, of whom
we shall have to speak again, was an admirer and imi-
tator of Berni. Novelty of thought seldom appears in

170 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the farrago of his rhymes, but the wholesome wit of
our older writers is in them, and the author lives in
them as he was. Lasca belonged to the Academy of
the "Umidi," the tornatella of jovial friends who from
1540 had met in a dwelling. When they formed them-
selves into a solemn assembly of literati as the Florentine
Academy, he found himself excluded, and he then at-
tacked the Academy with malicious sarcasm. Turning
the Bernesque form into literary satire, he impressed
upon it the seal of his own genius ; his originality comes
out in this, not in certain careless metrical novelties, as
the madrigaloni and the madrigalesse. Besides the male did
sonnets, he wrote a great number of quite spirited stanse
and some carnival songs, which are among the best of
a collection from authors of various times which he com-
piled and published.

The sonnet malcdico, employed felicitously by Lasca,
and by Alfonso de' Pazzi and others, was a form ren-
dered flexible by long use. In Rome, where Berni's
Capitoli had such success, it was in favor for a time as
a medium especially for anonymous anti-papal invective.
The pasquinade, which at a certain time assumed im-
portance there and the character of a class of literature,
had for the most part this form. It is true that at first
only Latin verses were hung on the torso of Master
Pasquino — the remains of an ancient statue to which was
given the name of a teacher living opposite to it at the
corner of the Orsini palace in accordance with a classic
custom revived by the scholars of the Renaissance ; and
they were foolish 'discourses of academicians or labored
efforts of students. But very soon the torso was al-
lowed such freedom in language that all the literary ut-
terances of Roman malice were gathered at his pedestal.
To the classic epigram, in a language understood by few,
were soon added the sonnet filled with secret allusions
in the manner of Burchiello and Pistoia, The satires

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 171

were written in the name of Pasquino, making him the
principal interlocutor in an imaginary dialogue. The
true pasquinades began at the opening of the pontificate
of Leo X, and the most notable examples appeared dur-
ing the conclave at the election of Adrian VI, and were
the work of Pietro Aretino.

With the burlesque poetry attempted by great num-
bers, the pastoral, introduced by Lorenzo and Pulci, con-
tinued to be cultivated in the sixteenth century. Berni,
to whom Ncncia and Bcca were not unknown, produced
octaves on country life. In Catrina he gave dramatic
form to the rhymed narrative in octaves, offering a fresh
and vivacious reproduction of scenes from rural life. Of
more importance is another class of verse, which flour-
ished abundantly in that century — that in which the ex-
pression of personal sentiment is interwoven with ac-
counts of military enterprises, descriptions of idyllic
scenes, myths, praises of illustrious personages. First
among these are the octaves upon the portrait of Giulia
Gonzaga and the Ninfa tibcrina ("Nymph of the Tiber")
by Francesco Maria Molza, of Modena (1489-1544). In
the latter, recalling in many characteristics the stanzas
of Lorenzo de' Medici and Politian, the author, following
the way opened by those two Florentines, has kept the
spontaneous vivacity given to the classic idyl by Lorenzo,
and at the same time has added the perfection of style
and diction that every form of art received in the hands
of our cinquccentoists. Not less admirable is the Clorida
of Tansillo, a lyrico-descriptive poem with some remin-
iscences of Sannazzaro and some imitations of Ovid. A
series of quatrains in it, of idyllic freshness, in flexible
octave lines, makes the splendid Riviera with the tomb of
Virgil flash before our eyes in seeming reality. The
Stance a Bernardino Martirano, by the same author, merit
honorable mention by their variety of content and move-
ment, by their uniform and polished delicacy of style.

172 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

The mythological stories written by Alamanni, Bernardo
Tasso, Parabosco and others, in blank verse, should not
be passed over. Narratives like these preluded the fa-
mous Adone of Marino.

The monotony of the lyric poetry of the time was re-
lieved not only by the poems just mentioned, but by
work on historical or political subjects. Among the
verses of Galeazzo di Tarsia is a sonnet much admired
by Foscolo, and in truth among the most beautiful of
the sixteenth century — Gia corsi I'Alpi gelide e Canute —
in which the poet hails Italy as he comes home from be-
yond the Alps. Some note of emotion is sounded wher-
ever the political situation is touched, even in canzonieri
that are mediocre or distinctly poor. Fresh and robust
ballate were sometimes heard from the exulting populace
on account of some fortunate stroke in war. But there
is more straw than grain in the poetic mass gathered by
Marin Sanudo upon the political events affecting Venice
from 1494 to 1527. He was a patrician of that city, and
left in addition many vigorous and valuable volumes of
Diarii and other historic works. No batter are the rhymes
of the same class which were collected to form the twen-
ty cantos of Delle guerre orrende d'ltalia, the twenty-six
of the Successi Sellici of Niccolo degli Agostini. Only a
Petrarchist, master of language and style, can express
elegantly, if not vigorously, what he feels for his country
— like Veronica da Gambara, Michelangelo, Domenico
Venier, and, better than these and than all others, Gio-
vanni Guidiccioni (1500-1541), a prelate of Lucca. In
a few fine sonnets he contrasts the ancient grandeur with
the existing ignominy of Italy.

Notwithstanding its defects, the lyric poetry of Italy
in the cinqucccnto had patrons and imitators in other
countries.

In the time of Francis I a few Italian versifiers crossed
the mountains and were kindly received at his court. Chief

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 173

among them was Luigi Alamanni, a Florentine (1495-
1556). This cultured and elegant gentleman, having
taken part in 1522 in a conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio
de' Medici, was compelled to leave Florence, and re-
paired first to Venice, then to Switzerland, then to
France. He was able to return when in 1527 the Medici
were again driven out; but after their restoration, which
followed the memorable siege, he was sent to Provence,
and in 1532, for having gone elsewhere, was declared a
rebel. From that time he devoted his pen to the service
of the King of France, whose munificence is always pres-
ent in his songs, sonnets, elegies, eclogues, and mytholo-
gical fables in verse. His patron gave him a country
retreat between the Durance and the Arc, where for
several months each year he wrote lyrics and poems.
Cultivazione, six books of instruction in blank verse on
fields and gardens, was written in his winter home. He
was employed in embassies by Francis I and Henry II,
and Catherine de' Medici, when she became queen, chose
him for her majordomo.

It is undeniable that Alamanni contributed to the
spread of Italienesimo in France. To this end our books
cooperated; they were read and prized in polite society
and at court, and the French poets of the time of King
Francis were much indebted to Italian versifiers. Not
a few imitations of Italian work are met with in Pierre
Ronsard, leader of the famous Plciade, and in others,
his contemporaries. Philippe Desportes, in the time of
Henry III, appropriated directly very many sonnets of
our sixteenth-century writers, his poems being hardly
more than translations. French poetry did not, of course,
gain much of thought and feeling from these borrowings ;
but in the matter of language and style we conferred
upon it inestimable benefits.

In Spain, Juan Boscan, influenced in 1526 by Nava-
gero, ambassador to Charles V, transplanted into the

174 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

poetry of his nation our meters and poetic forms. Ad-
vancing beyond him in the same time, Garcilaso de la
Vega, who had been long among us, derived from the
Italians the flower of his art, his most admired inspira-
tions. The same may be said for Portugal of Francesco
de Sa y Miranda, the first of the classic Lusitanians.
England, where others had carried from Italy the ele-
gance of Petrarch and the subtlety of Serafino dell'
Aquila, had its own Petrarch in Sir Philip Sidney.

Dramatic literature was not less abundantly produced
in this century than lyric ; for it there was a limited num-
ber of models, universally held to be most perfect.

The most ancient Italian tragedy is the Panfila of Pis-
toia (1499), an unhappy attempt to write Italian tragedy
after the manner of Seneca, using the plot of a novel of
the Decameron and the measure of the Commedia, and
transforming the choruses into barsellcte. From the year
when this was written up to 1515, we know of no other
tragedies in the vernacular in imitation of the classic;
for recasts of Politian's Orfco and of Sofonisba, by Gale-
otto del Carretto (1502), cannot be called classic imita-
tions. Scholars at this time gave their attention to the
study of the Greek tragedians before whose work that of
Seneca, so much admired before, grew pale. Some of
them -wrote dramas in Latin. The unlearned tried to fol-
low in their own idiom the fading and uncertain tradi-
tions of the mediaeval secular stage; and so arose gro-
tesque scenic compositions and narrative dramas on his-
toric subjects, like the Lautrec of Francesco Mantovano
(1523), intended for recital before the people upon a tem-
porary stage by one or more performers.

The first regular Italian tragedy dates from 1515 and
was written under Greek influence at Rome, the center
of the revived classic culture, by a gentleman who in
every class of literature held to the most strict classicism,
Giangiorgio Trissino. His Sofonisba — the subject taken

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 175

from the thirtieth book of Livy, sections 11-15 — i
constructed but cold, verbose, and prosy; its importance
is purely historical. In it Trissino pointed out the way
to be taken in tragedy by putting in practice the canons
of the Greek theater and observing the Aristotelian uni-
ties of time and action. The chorus intervenes, com-
menting on the dialogue; the author proposes to him-
self to move to "compassion and fear," giving delight
to the listener "by diverse instructions." The meter is
the hendecasyllabic, akin to the rhythm preferred in
the Greek and Latin tragedies, free from rhyme "because
discourse that moves compassion springs from grief, and
grief utters impromptu words." The blank verse of
Trissino in Sofonisba as well as in The Deliverance of
Italy from the Goths sins by dulness and monotony; but
the adoption of that meter for the drama was fortunate
and it has remained the meter for Italian tragedy to
this day.

After Trissino, other tragedians took care above all
to give their plays the most irreproachable regularity
according to the models and precepts of the Greeks, thus
fettering the imagination and the emotions, and with
heavy loss of scenic illusion and dramatic effect. In
the same year with Sofonisba was written, also in Rome,
Rosmunda, by Giovanni Rucellai (1475-1525), a Floren-
tine and close friend of Trissino, from whom he received
encouragement to undertake it and the prescribed form.
In it the Lombard story of Rosmunda is united with
the Greek story of Antigone, and the tragedy of
Sophocles is in some passages literally translated. More-
over, events succeed one another and accumulate tu-
multuously, and the pcdcstris scrmo of the Trissinian
tragedy reappears, a result of the ill-comprehended study
of Greek simplicity. It has the advantage over Sofo-
nisba of purer Tuscan language and some gleams of
poetry. The same may be said also of Oreste (1525),

176 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

by the same author, a free paraphrase of Iphigenia in
Tuuris by Euripides. The meters are like those of Tris-
sino, blank verse and strophes of canzone, with some
changes.

Alessandro Pazzi de' Medici, a fellow-citizen of Rucel-
lai, and, like him, a nephew by his mother's side of
Lorenzo de' Medici, rejected Trissino's meter, attempt-
ing to attain to Grecian simplicity by the use of a verse of
his invention — twelve syllables, without fixed accent.
But, to say nothing of his versions of ancient dramas,
his Dido in Carthage is prose in symmetrical series of
syllables. Ludovico Martelli, another Florentine, made
a failure in Tidlia, a forced application of the story of
Electra in Sophocles to the wife of Tarquin the Proud.
The Antigone of Alamanni, incomparably better, is only
a version, with additions and trifling changes, of the
tragedy of that name by Sophocles. The only Italian
dramatist of this age that was productive and original
in design was Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, of Ferrara,
already spoken of.

To Giraldi (1504-1573), learned professor at the Stu-
dio in Ferrara, we owe nine tragedies. The most cele-
brated among them is Orbecche, recited in 1541 in the
house of the author by noted artists. In all, Giraldi, a
scholar and critic, carried into effect the theory of the
drama that he explains systematically in a discourse.
He believed that the aim of tragedy should be to re-
form the customs of the time ; therefore, while he praised
the Greeks, he favored returning to the imitation of
Seneca, mo-3l par ercrUvrc. But his doctrines have
also some of the modern spirit, whether by the objections
he dared to offer to the famous unities, making use of
the name of Aristotle himself, or because he held for
a thing "more than certain" that the ancient poets, if
they were to live again, would seek "to satisfy spectators
of these times with new material." Consequently, he

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 177

has used purely imaginary themes in seven of his tra-
gedies, and in some a double plot; in five the choruses
are given in the interval between the acts, and are the
lyric expression of the feelings excited by the plot in the
consciousness of those assisting in its development.
Further, more than one of the dramas has a happy end-
ing, and in the Antivalomeni, ("The Exchange") the con-
fusion of lovers gives it the character of comedy. More-
over, Giraldi's tragedies resemble in a way the romantic
drama of our age. For, if historic color is lacking in
them, and the characters are types, the author having
considered only the generic nature of things and per-
sons, in accordance with his purpose to instruct, yet his
work has several features in common with our drama
besides those already indicated: death on the stage,
avoided by all dramatists before him; the large number
of characters; the special care given to the representa-
tion of feminine types ; the mingling of the horrible with
the pathetic; and, finally, the style. It does honor to
Giraldi that in the sixteenth century he should have
enunciated the theory that "conversation on the stage
should be in the style natural to the quality of the char-
acters introduced."

But admirers and imitators were attracted, not by
these ideas, but by the atrocities in some of Giraldi's
tragedies, especially in Orbecchc; in the last act of that
tragedy the severed hands of Oronte, husband of Or-
becche, and the bodies of his murdered children were
shown upon the stage. Sperone Speroni, author of
Canace (1546), added the further horror of incest, put-
ting upon the stage the classic story of Canace and
Macareus, making it the subject of a languid and af-
fected tragedy, a tiresome series of conversations, nar-
rations and moralizings, which was attacked with bitter
censure, and was defended by the author with equal acri-
mony. Pietro Aretino took a middle way between trage-
H

178 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

dy and comedy in his Orazia (1546), as Giraldi did in
more than one of his dramas. Representing the return
to Rome of Horatius, conqueror of the Curiatii, he gave
a partly tragic character to the plot, which has a happy
ending. His drama, though not free from grave faults
of style, avoids the horror and tiresomeness of the
others, and is distinguished by the naturalness in which
some emotions find in it their dramatic expression.
Neither the tragedies of Dolce, nor the Edippo (1556)
of Anguillara — a clumsy parody rather than imitation of
the two tragedies of Sophocles, King (Edipus and (Edipus
at Colonus— deserve to be placed by its side.

The fate of comedy in this age was better. Indepen-
dent of the Latin dramatic works of the fifteenth cen-
tury, it had its origin in the return of Plautus and
Terence to the Italian stage. The Menccchmi of Plau-
tus was recited at Ferrara in 1486, in the court of the
ducal palace, in the presence of many thousand specta-
tors. The next year and in 1491 the Amphitryo was
presented; then other ancient comedies. They were not
given in the original, which would not have been under-
stood by those auditors, but in free translations, from
which the transition was easy to comedies imitated from
the classics. The leader in this transition was the most
famous poet of the court of Este, Ariosto, with his
Cassaria ("The Chest") and other comedies.

The Cassaria, acted in the great hall of the ducal pal-
ace, pleased the audience and seemed full of "such strata-
gems and deceptions and so many new incidents and
such fine morality and various things, as were more
than twice those in Terence." It has the type, the plot
and the personages of the Roman comedy; it is a cheat
practised by two scapegraces upon their parents and
upon a go-between, by means of clever servants. Still,
it has merits; the dialogue is lively, the tricks are spon-
taneous, the drawing of characters not unworthy of the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 179

author of Orlando Furioso. These merits appear again,
together with a nearer approach to modern standards,
in the succeeding comedies of Ariosto, where the scene
is laid in Ferrara, not, as in the first, in Greece. In the
prologue to the Snppositi ("The Substitutes") produced
in 1509, the poet says he took his material partly from
the C apt hi of Plautus and partly from Terence's
Eunuchus. But he took from these and other classic
comedies with discretion, not reproducing merely the
plots of the Latin plays, but drawing here and there
from our own sources, as the Decameron. Shakespeare,
who may have read the Suppositi in the English trans-
lation issued in 1556, made use of it in The Taming of
tJie Shrew.

Ariosto has drawn some types and conditions of his
own city in the Negromante ("The Necromancer"), writ-
ten in 1520, which is a comedy of plot approach-
ing the comedy of character; the action revolves about
the protagonist, a roving Jew devoted to medicine and
magic. The same is true of Lena (1529), which is full
of vis comica, of realistic passages, and pungent allusions
to events taking place every day under the eyes of the
people; and also in the Scolastica, a comedy left incom-
plete by Ariosto and finished by his brother Gabriel,
which carries us into the midst of the student life of
Ferrara. The last three are in eleven-syllabled, un-
rhymed lines. There are two versions each of the Cas-
saria and the Suppositi, one in prose, and the other,
written later, in the same meter with the other three.
We, to whom every form of rhythm seems ill-adapted
for the representation of the comic aspects of life, prefer
the prose versions; but it is well to notice that even
in the comedies Ariosto has used verse worthy of his
work. What a difference there is between the plain
blank verse of Sofonisba and the sdruccioli, so much more
difficult, of Cassaria!

180 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Ariosto's comedies have indeed constant characteristics
that are not fine, detracting from their verisimilitude and
variety; but these are common to all the Italian comedy
of that century. Jacopo Nardi, for example, wrote a
play, Amicizia ("Friendship"), which was recited before
the Signoria of Florence between 1503 and 1512. It waa
a dramatization of one of Boccaccio's novels (X, 8), and
the greater part of the incidents were narrated, instead
of being acted upon the stage. And Cardinal Bernardo
Dovizi da Bibbiena (1470-1520), a witty and genial man,
had his play Calandria acted in 1513 at the court of Ur-
bino, and in 1518 in his own rooms in the Vatican. It
recalls the Casino, of Plautus and takes its principal motif
from the Men&chmi of the same author, turning upon the
likeness between twins, the cause of odd misunderstand-
ings. None the less, it exhibits customs and characters
of the sixteenth century in Italy, faithfully depicted amid
the ambiguities and imbroglios, the burden of which falls
upon the stupid Calando, a near relative of Boccaccio's
Calandrino. The indecency, an end unto itself, over-
flows in this comedy, becoming at times disgustingly
infamous.

The same state of things exists in the Mandragola
("Mandrake"), by Machiavelli, acted in Rome in 1520,
though it has more diversity of color and design ; the ac-
tion progresses regularly; each character is true to its
type; the dialogue, brisk and lively, makes use of the
abundance of words, fine distinctions, and picturesque
phrases of the Florentine idiom. Here the indecent jest-
ing is not an end unto itself, but rather a medium for
representing a society profoundly corrupt. Fra Timoteo,
whose counsels and subterfuges drag a pure woman to
adultery, seems a character that could not have been de-
signed solely to arouse laughter ; to exhibit the perverted
consciences of certain religious of his time must have
been Machiavelli's intention; and the fact that that

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 181

brother attends with fervor to certain stupid external ob-
servances of religion is not a sufficient reason to lead
us to see in him a poor devil dragged by the hair into
crime.

In Mandragola, a comedy of intrigue and at the same
time a picture of manners, the argument, novelistic in
kind, is developed naturally; the characters are modern,
with the real instincts and weaknesses of men ; the style
is original, robust, at times statuesque. Machiavelli's
Clizia, imitated, and here and there translated from
the Casino, of Plautus, is of less value in respect of art;
but historically it is important because the "honest ex-
ample" that the author places before the spectators is
that of a family that brings itself into disgrace at the
insane passion of an old man, and the "fruit" which he
wishes them to profit by consists in pointing out that
love should be legitimate and pure. He completes in
Clizia the expression of the conception of Mandragola,
which he wishes to continue and in one point to revoke
(II, 3). Mandragola depicts the injury that the shameless
morals of the time worked to the family, especially by
the interference in its affairs of ecclesiastics unworthy
of their calling. Clisia points out the remedy in a tem-
perate and sensible observance of religion taken for the
guide to conduct, without the intrusion into the domestic
sanctuary of evil-doers from without.

The Clizia was imitated in more than one feature by
Donato Giannotti in the Vccchio Amoroso ("Old Man in
Love") of the date 1536, which is one of the most notable
comedies of the cinquccento by reason of its pure Flor-
entine style and the felicitous presentation of scenes of
domestic and civic life. With those comedies should be
classed also one by Agostino Ricchi, of Lucca, presented
ceremoniously in Bologna in 1530 for the coronation of
Charles V. In I Tre Tiranni ("The Three Tyrants") the
imitation of classic literature is quite free, the unity cf

182 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

time is deliberately disregarded, and the author uses the
sciolto piano, then new in comedy, seeking the naturalness
of familiar speech.

The Aridosia (1536), by Lorenzino de' Medici, is a
much more artistic work. It was played in Florence for
the nuptials of Duke Alexander with Margaret of Aus-
tria. Though, as usual, it is not original, it takes much
from life and the society of its time ; on the other hand,
among the imitations of Latin comedy, those in the Ari-
dosia after the Aulnlaria and the Mostcllaria, by Plautus
and the Adelphi by Terence, are, without any doubt,
among the best ; and the type of miser, Aridosia, drawn
by Lorenzino rivals the famous one of Plautus. If the
Medici had not retained certain details of the ancient
comedy (the recognition, the slave-trade, etc.), in too
open contrast with changed customs, the Aridosia, in
which the action progresses without disguise of intrigues,
with sprightly dialogue and diction always correct and
graceful, might be pleasing for representation in our day.

Sprightliness of dialogue and excellence of language
are the best claim to praise of three other productive
Florentine comedy-writers — D'Ambra, Lasca, and Cecchi.
Francesco d'Ambra (1499-1558), member of the Floren-
tine Academy, and in 1549 its president, wrote // Furto
("The Theft"), a comedy in prose to be acted at the
Academy, and afterward he wrote in hendecasyllabic the
Bernardi and the Cofamria; in these comedies he shows
special skill in misunderstandings, cases of mistaken
identity, and bizarre accidents. Lasca put upon the stage
native tradition against the scholars loyal to the classics.
In Gclosia ("Jealousy"), besides the episode of Ginevra di
Scozia, after the manner of Ariosto, he had used the Sitp-
positi and a novel of the Decameron (VIII, 7) ; the Spiri-
tata ("The Possessed"), so called from a girl who, in order
to have a husband to her mind, "pretends that a spirit
has entered into her," is an imitation of Lorenzino's

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 183

Aridosia; in the Strega ("Sorceress") he had in view
especially Ariosto's Ncgromantc; and in others of his
comedies the plots and character types were taken from
Ariosto, Medici, and Bibbiena. Consequently, he ap-
proached the models of the commcdia romana by an in-
direct route, and drew the life and manners of the six-
teenth century better than others with their classicism
— Varchi in the Snoccra ("The Mother-in-Law"), Gelli
in the Sporta ("The Basket") and in the Errore ("The
Mistake"), Alamanni in the Flora, Firenzuola in the
Lucidi ("The Transparent") and the Trinuzia ("Triple
Marriage"), and Trissino in the Siniilliuii.

Giovan Maria Cecchi (1518-1587), a notary of mild dis-
position and of fertile invention, welcome alike to the
crowd of the cacciapcnsicri (sans sand) and to the frata
and the monks whose claustral leisure he cheered, made
up for his want of profundity by wit and a store of
amusing fictions. In his varied comic productions, he
sometimes gives free imitations of the classics, as in
La Moglie ("The Wife"), Gli Sciamiti ("The Ama-
ranths"), La Dote ("The Dowry"); sometimes, as in the
Assmolo ("The Owl"), showing some of the excellencies
of the Ufandragola, which it resembles, he has taken eclec-
tically from novels; and again, he puts upon the stage
scenes from daily life, as in // donzcllo and // scrviziale.

These are the three kinds of subjects into which the
comedy of the sixteenth century may be divided and
classified. To the last-named class belongs the Strac-
cioni ("Men in Rags"), by Annibal Caro, where real per-
sonages are brought upon the stage, and where, as in
Gl' inghtsti Sdcgtii ("The Unjust Anger"), by Bernardino
Pino da Cagli, they raise us "into more bracing air."
On the other hand, we are amid the filth that spoils the
greater part of the comedy of this age, in reading //
Marcscalco ("The Blacksmith"), La Cortigiana, L'Ipocrito
("The Hypocrite"), La Talanta and // Filosofo, of Pietro

184 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Aretino. They likewise depict the times and the man-
ners, but overdrawn, since in this kind of literature that
free genius would not submit to the yoke of mere imita-

\ tion. The types of the pedant, of the parasite — who,

^ with charity always in his mouth, is watching his op-

cv portunity to swindle — of the scholar immersed in his

\ books and neglecting the affairs of his house and his

wife, and, together with these, a mass of figures taken
from actual life, which Aretino carries rapidly before us,
seem to live and move in this comedy, neglectful of form,
and poor in plot, but singular and attractive.

While the literati exerted themselves to imitate the
tragedies and comedies of antiquity, the secular plays
among the people were gradually growing richer and
fuller. The frottok in dialogue, which in the Sacred
Representations often took the place of the "Annuncia-
tions," and which were developed from monologues till
they assumed the form of little dramas on domestic and
social subjects, and acquired a life of their own, were
akin to the frottok of buffoonery not only by name but
by meter. Similarly, the gliommeri of Sannazzaro, and
others, transmitted to us from the close of the fifteenth
century by gentlemen of the Court of Aragon, imitate
the plebeian histrionic pieces and have the meter of the
frottola. They are monologues, and the scenic pieces
that have come down to us from the end of the fifteenth
century, under the name of farces, are monologues made
over and made better. At Naples, in the reign of the
Aragonese, together with strambotti and barzdktte, arose
from the streets and squares the filastrocche (nonsense
rhymes) and the contests of the merry-andrews. Pietro
Antonio Caracciolo, aided by other gentlemen, recited
farces in hendecasyllabic lines with rhymes in the middle,
the favorite form of the frottok, which, like the frottok
included in the Sacred Representations, depicted the fa-
miliar life of the people. Examples of the popular farces,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 185

amplified from monologues or buffoon contests, upon
which those of Caracciolo were modeled, are to be found
in the later cavaiolc, so called because they mimicked and
ridiculed the inhabitants of Cava de' Tirreni.

What Caracciolo was at Naples, that was in Pied-
mont Giovan Giorgio Alione, of Asti, who, living in an
Italian province with trans-Alpine manners, wrote farces
in the dialect of his city, mostly imitations vof the French.
Some of them took their material from conditions and
events of the time — Farsa del Franzoso allogiato all' osteria
del Lombardo, ("Farce of the Frenchman Lodged at the
Lombard Inn"). They are not in Astigian, but in a lan-
guage mixed of various dialect elements. Others re-
semble the moralities or moral farces, Farsa dell' Uomo e
de' suoi cinque Sensi ("Farce of Man and of His Five
Senses"). Italian moralities were written in the first
years of the century, and popular farces, independent
of French models, abounded. From simple recitals im-
provised before random audiences — contrasts, gliomnieri,
mariasi, or mogliazci — the farces were changed into short
scenic pieces full of scurrilous jests; then at last they
took on a literary character, and often a moral purpose.
Further, this form, standing midway between imitations
of Latin originals and the buffoonery of the streets, had
in that age many ramifications and offshoots.

From the popular farce is developed the comic art of
Angelo Beolco, called Ruzzante (i502?-i542), a Paduan,
prince of the vernacular comedy of the sixteenth cen-
tury. He was an actor, and his stage experience is
manifest in all his comedies. It is of use, however, to
distinguish, from those on classic lines, those in which
he has shown the freedom of tendency and of standards
which is his glory. These last approach in form the
popular farces, and are themselves farces; the Fiorina.
a simple but effective picture of rural life, gives an ad-
mirable drawing of peasant love. Nor do Ruzzante's

186 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

comedies merely please and entertain; they are aids to
the study of "demo-psychology," through the large basis
of truth under the comic parody and the great number
of canzoni, proverbs and popular sayings that can be
gathered from them. Moreover, the Paduan dialect, in
the mouths of most of the characters, is lively and fresh.
In these respects, as also in his attitude toward dramatic
art, Ruzzante surpasses most of the other authors of
vernacular comedy that flourished contemporaneously
with him in Venetia.

Gigio Artemio Giancarli, of Rovigo, drew a train of
imitators after him with his Zingara ("Gipsy"), written
in 1545; but, more than from any other cause, by rea-
son of the popularity of the subject, which connects
with the vast "zingaresque literature," common to di-
verse nations. Andrea Calmo (isioP-isyi), a Venetian,
and a comic actor like II Ruzzante, is certainly worthy
of study, on account of the medley of different dialects,
and the realistic images of the life of his time, given in
his comedies, where the characters of the Latin theater
are not reproduced — // Saltuzza (name of a character),
La Spagnolas and others; but with one half more sim-
plicity II Ruzzante has obtained much better effects.

Closely connected with the popular farces are the
commedie rusticane written in Siena in the first half of the
sixteenth century. Even from mediaeval times the ridi-
cule of nobles and citizens had been directed against
the inhabitants of the fields, and rustics had been loaded
with contumely in prose and in verse, in Latin and in
Italian. It is not strange, therefore, that their clownish-
ness, not disjoined from dull craft, had given rise to
a special form of stage composition, and that these were
so pleasing that the artists who wrote and recited them
were invited to Rome by Leo X and Agostino Chigi;
and that the ablest among them, Niccolo Campani, called
Lo Strascino, attained to great fame. In some of these

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 187

rustic comedies or farces, divinities, nymphs and satyrs
have part; the conventional bucolic element is joined to
rusticity inspired by reality. This hybrid genus flou-
rished especially with the Rozzi, a society of workmen
founded in Siena in 1531 with the object of passing their
holidays in rational amusements.

All these popular farces and comedies preluded the
commcdia dell' or/c,— comedy of arts, or comedy of masks,
— which lorded it on the Italian stage for nearly two
centuries. There, in fact, are met, besides some direc-
tions for improvisation, fixed types, which recall to us
the maschcrc, and personages using like them a fixed
dialect.

The Italian drama of the sixteenth century, with afl
its defects, was famed and circulated outside of Italy.

Italian actors were received in France with rejoicing.
Melin de Saint-Gelais translated Trissino's Sofonisba
and had it acted. The Italian colony at Lyons wished
to see the Calandria on the stage. Our comedies and
tragedies freed the French from the fetters of the me-
diaeval secular drama; their primitive comedy can be
called, not Latinized, but Italianized. In fact, a dramatic
writer, Jean de la Taille, places Ariosto as a writer of
comedy beside Plautus and Terence, and advises his
nation to model their own drama upon the Italian. Pierre
Larivey, originally Florentine (L' Arrive is a translation
of the surname Giunti), left nine comedies, all following
to some extent in the line of ours. And nearly as much
may be said of the French tragedy of the century.

In Spain the drama preserved the national impress;
but from the autos sacramentalcs, destitute of artistic
value, arose rules for comedy and tragedy in imitation
of the Italian. As Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega
in lyric poetry, so Lope de Rueda in the drama is at the
top of the ladder by which Italian ism rose so high in
Spain; the intermediate steps are occupied by writers

188 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

that flourished late in. the fifteenth and early in the six-
teenth centuries, and lived for some time in Italy —
Juan del Enema and Bartolommeo de Torres Naharra
The former was chapelmaster at the Vatican ; the second
published his Propaladia at Naples; and both studied
our scenic eclogue, our rural farce, our comedy. De
Rueda is specially notable for his imitation of Giancarli's
Zingara in Medora.

Finally, the connection of the comedies of Moliere,
greatest among the French writers of this class, with
the Italian drama of that age, is not to be overlooked,
nor the circulation of sixteenth-century Italian drama
in England and, lastly, in Holland. About half of the
English dramatic productions in the time of Queen
Elizabeth can be traced, by one path or another, to
Italy; and the prince of dramatists, William Shakes-
peare, drew frequently from Italian sources.

Our prose of this age, as well, had its admirers and
imitators outside of Italy, varied and vivid as it was,
notwithstanding its uniformity of character and the re-
straint of its style. There was no subject that it had
not treated, no class in which it had not succeeded. But
its greatest glory is in history; and the writers of his-
tories, chronicles and annals are counted by hundreds.

First among them, after Machiavelli and Guicciardini,
is Pier Francesco Giambullari (1495-1555), a mild and
upright man of letters, friend of the Medici and ab-
sorbed in study. In his History of Europe, interrupted at
Book VII, which covers 887 to 947 of our era, he un-
dertakes to represent the uncertain and confused affairs
of distant countries in time not less distant, following
Luitprand's Antapodosis, and making use at the same time
of very many other writers, directly or indirectly, but
always with critical discretion. In this work, the ex-
cellencies of style, to which the author has sacrificed
more than one of substance, are such that Giordani

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 189

called it "the most perfect prose of the cinquccento."
The account of the battle between Arnulf of Germany
and Zwentebold, or Sviatopulk, King of the Bohemians
and Moravians, the famous episode of Tocco the archer,
the description of the Hungarians in their primitive con-
dition of barbarism, are passages with which every stu-
dent of the language and of Italian prose is familiar.

No history of ancient times worthy to stand beside
Giambullari's was written in Italy until Sigonio's. It
was much easier to narrate events of contemporaneous
history, and many writers engaged in it. But with some
of them the judgment was often obscured by passion,
even when they were not bribed by favors and emolu-
ments, like Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), of Como, a Papal
physician, created Bishop of Nocera in 1528. In the
forty-five books, in Latin, of the History of My Own
Times, he has diligently gathered a great mass of ma-
terial from various sources; but too often, to use one
of his own phrases, he has "tipped his pen with gold"
in praise of those that furnished the gold.

After Guicciardini's History of Italy, the only one of
note among those in Italian dealing with the events
of the entire peninsula is the History of My Own Times,
by Giovan Battista Adrian! (i5i3?-i579), a Florentine,
who in 1549 and subsequently was a lecturer on elo-
quence in his own city. It covers the time of Cosimo
I; and it is said to have been based, not only on docu-
ments from the archives, but upon the mcmorie scgrete
of the Duke by whose command it was written. Com-
ing from such a source, the statements of the ducal
historian concerning the political events of his time,
though not to be rejected, are to be taken with caution.

Much more numerous are the histories of municipali-
ties; and in this field also the most and the best come
from Florence. Jacopo Nardi (1476-1563), a Florentine
of an ancient and noble family opposed to the Medici,

190 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

lived in exile after the . fall of the Republic, maintain-
ing himself with the meager proceeds of wearisome
labor at translating, and continuing to oppose the op-
pressors of his country. In 1535 when the exiles from
Florence brought their cause before Charles V in Naples,
Nardi spoke in their name. Later, when every hope
of victory had vanished, he gave himself up to letters
and reflection; and in Venice, in the society of friends
and fellow-citizens who loved him, he first made a trans-
lation of Livy (1540), and then wrote for his own di-
version and solace his Memorie ("Reminiscences") of the
events in his country in which he had taken part. In
the ten books of the History of the City of Florence,
which were published after his death, the last struggles
of Florentine liberty are related with moderation and
without rhetoric or acrimony. The reader feels it to be
the work of the man of long experience resigned to
the will of God — the old man regarding the affairs of
the world with serenity. The style is somewhat languid,
and in the last books repetitions and lacunae are not
lacking. The matter is in part taken from a Diario by
Biagio Buonaccorsi. But certain details drawn by the
author from his own reminiscences are precious, and
the pages that he revised lead us to pass over the de-
fects in form of the remainder.

A more concise history of Florence, also anti-Medici,
is that of Giovan Michele Bruto. In his First Eight
Books of the History of Florence (1562) he relates, in a
Latin style, dignified and, as it were, in toga, the vicis-
situdes of Florence from its beginning to 1492. Filippo
de' Nerli (1485-1556), a partisan of the Medici, wrote
Commentarii de' Fatti Civili Occorsi dentro la citta di Fi-
renze dall' Anno 1215 al 1537 ("Commentaries on Civic
Events in the City of Florence from 1215 to 1537").
This is a diffuse and minute relation, in twelve books,
of the internal revolutions and dissensions of Florence,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 191

its main purpose being to show the great good for-
tune of the city in being saved by a single ruler, and
in "no longer having cause for civil contention concern-
ing matters of state." This work, aside from whatever
praise may be due to its art and style, should be ac-
cepted with caution as a source of history, because the
author has colored personages ^nd events according to
the suggestions of his passions.

Better in every resepect is the Florentine History of
Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565), a contemporary of Nerli.
It is a true and proper history, not commentaries or
recollections. Varchi, a man of letters, who held him-
self high within his country or without, had a passion
for study and academic activity, and wrote in the ver-
nacular a full history of Florence from 1527 to 1538,
magnificently provided for by Duke Cosimo, who made
him in addition the gift of a villa. He endeavored to
emulate the masterpieces of antiquity, aiming at dignity
of style more than effectiveness, and making his work
strictly correct in grammar and syntax. He knew how
to be truthful without failing in devotion to the Duke,
and did not withhold censure from Clement VII and
others of the House of Medici. The sources he drew
from were most varied — the public libraries, diaries and
private memoirs, oral and epistolary evidence — among
which were certain important letters addressed to him
by Giambattista Busini, — histories and chronicles. Like
him, Bernardo Segni (1504-1558) in his Florentine His-
tory from 1527 to 1555, notable for its sincerity and its
lucid and effective style, shows himself to be a lover of
liberty but not averse to the rule of Duke Cosimo. He
was a partisan of the oligarchy, and resigned himself
to the existing regime, as did Jacopo Pitti (1519-1589),
who left a history of Florence and an Apologia dci
Cappucci ("Defense of the Cappucci") in the form of a

192 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

dialogue, intended to defend democracy and censure
Guicciardini.

A Tuscan writer already mentioned, Giovanni Guidic-
cioni, was successively Governor of Rome, Bishop of
Fossombrone, nuncio at Madrid, President of the Ro-
magna, Pontifical Commissary in the War of 1541
against the Colonnesi, and Governor of the Marches.
His Lettere di Negozii ("Letters of a Diplomat") are
worthy to stand beside those of Guicciardini; to those
who can interpret them, they reveal important political
secrets and covertly indicate the hidden aims of the men
conducting the negotiations to which they refer.

But for other histories proper it is necessary to look
to Venetia and Genoa. The Serenissima had instituted
the office of public historian at the end of the preceding
century; and the first to which it was entrusted in
the sixteenth century was Andrea Navager, whose work
has not come down to us. But we have the Historic
Veneta of Bembo, in the Latin text and in an Italian
translation by the author, covering the period from 1487
to the death of Julius II. This gives in classic form
copious details from documents of the law-courts and
from the Diarii of Sanudo.

The Republic of Genoa had two conspicuous Latin
historians — Uberto Foglietta, of Genoa, and Jacopo Bon-
fadio, of Gorzano near Salo. To the former we owe a
dialogue in Italian, Delle cose delta Repubblica di Genova,
where, with freedom of speech rare in those times, he
assails the conservative party in power in Genoa. The
Annales (1528-50) of Bonfadio are a history of Venice
well constructed and full of vigor.

Other Italian cities had their historians in this age.
The Veronese Paolo Emilii (died in 1529) wrote De
rebus gestis Francomm ("Exploits of the Franks"), in imi-
tation of Polybius, Livy, and Thucydides, having in view
rather the relation of cause to effect than chronological

HISTORY OP ITALIAN LITERATURE 193

order, by which he opened new avenues for historical
science beyond the mountains. Lucio Marineo, a Sicil-
ian, a disciple of Pomponio Leto, and a professor at
Salamanca, repaid the favors of Ferdinand the Catholic
by writing various works upon Spain in Latin. Pietro
Martire, of Anghiera, in his valuable Opus Epistolarum,
a shining mirror of the times, expresses sentiments that
appear to be the fruit of an able mind and a conscience
kept stainless even in the life of a court. To him we
owe a work where for the first time the scientific ex-
plorations in the Western Hemisphere are narrated and
discussed, beginning with the first undertaking of Col-
umbus. Together with the great Collection of Voyages and
Travels by Giambattista Ramusio, of Treviso, it consti-
tutes a mine of information for the history of geography.

More than one of the historians of the cinquecento,
especially among the Tuscans, have left full and im-
portant biographies; for example, Nardi, Adriani and
Segni. Nardi has eloquent passages in the life of An-
tonio Giacomini Tebalducci; in the life of Niccolo Cap-
poni, attributed to Segni, the career of an important
personage is followed amid political vicissitudes with
admirable dexterity; Adriani's account of the activities
of Duke Cosimo is clear and well constructed.

A work of the highest value for the history of art is
Le Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori
("Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and
Architects"), by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), of Arez-
zo, himself a painter and architect. This voluminous
work, extending from Cimabue to Vasari himself, is
written in calm and graceful style; it not only gives
an immense mass of information, but represents admi-
rably the characters of the artists, often most eccentric.
Paolo Giovio wrote in Latin full biographies of person-
ages of his own and earlier times, drawn from a great
number of historic sources. His work was an example

194 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

and model to foreigners. In general it may be said of
these biographers that they have learned the art of
studying man in relation to historic events from our
literati and diplomats. In the Relasioni degli Ambascia-
torl Vencti ("Proceedings of the Venetian Ambassadors"),
secrets of various politicians are often guessed at with
great acumen.

This spirit of observation, exercised by writers even
in the consideration of their own thoughts and feelings,
gave occasion to autobiographies of admirable sincerity.
Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), a Florentine who han-
dled with equal skill the small sword, the chisel, and
the graver, left a Vita de se Stessa ("Life of Himself")
written, in the style in which he spoke, and most singu-
lar. Among all our prose writers he is the most
original, the least reflective; in his writing he disre-
garded the rules and forms of grammar almost as much
as those of morals in his life. He represents objects
with the clearness of line and contour that he would
have given them by his own proper art of design. And
few novels contain such an abundance of imaginary
types or portraits imitated from life as Cellini's auto-
biography has of types culled, one might almost say
surprised, in actual daily life. What the Cortegiano of.
Castiglione is for the court life of the sixteenth century,
this is for the Bohemia of dissolute artists and adven-
turers. Among them is encamped the author, brave
and grotesque, petulant and quarrelsome. For Cellini
has depicted himself with ingenuousness that makes one
smile, as Baretti writes subtly: "A little of a traitor
without believing himself such, a vain braggart without
suspecting it, with a dose of madness not moderate,
accompanied by a firm confidence that he is very wise,
circumspect and prudent." A document of the soul of
a glorious artificer and at the same time a faithful pic-
ture of times and manners, the Life of Benvenuto

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 195

Cellini has had such a translator as Goethe, and has met
with great success outside of Italy.

Few romances were written in the first half of the
sixteenth century. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("The
Amorous Contest of the Dreaming Lover of Polia"),
by Frate Francesco Colonna, published at Venice in
1499, is a strange book in pedantic prose, bristling with
Latinisms and heavy with erudition, where the author
represents allegorically his erotic vicissitudes, taking
as his model the Amoroso Visionc of Boccaccio. In the
Peregrine ("Pilgrim") Jacopo Caviceo, of Parma, fused
together classic, Dantesque, and Boccaccian elements but
with a simple plot and with poverty of imagination.
Niccolo Franco's foolish and prolix Filena is an intermi-
nable love-story imitated from the Ameto. Nothing
much better is to be said of the Storia di Fileto Veronese
("Story of Fileto of Verona"), by Ludovico Corfino, or
of the Compassionci'oli avvenimenti d'Erasto ("Pitiable Ad-
ventures of Erastus"), taken from one of the many
versions of the popular Book of the Seven Wise Men.

The novelists were numerous in this age, and their
work, together with the comedy, to which it is closely
related, offers a lively picture of the domestic and social
life of the Italians of the cinqiicccnto. Lasca and Giro-
lamo Perabosco wrote novels and comedies. The
latter, organist of St. Mark's at Venice, has used more
than one of the plots of his dramas as themes for stories
in the Diporti ("Diversions"). II Lasca, as Anton Fran-
cesco Grazzini was called among the "Umidi" (1503-
1584), was a Florentine indifferently educated, but, as
we have seen, ingenious and witty. His comedies and
novels complement each other. The Cene ("Suppers")
were to comprise thirty stories, recounted, after Boc-
caccio's plan, before and after supper, by fifteen pairs of
lovers in three days ; but there are only twenty-two, the
others, except the beginning of one, having been lost.

1% FRANCESCO FLAMINI

They constitute, none the less, an important collection.
The continuous imitation of the Decameron does not lessen
the comic effect of the abundant witticisms and pictur-
esque phrases.

But among Italian novelists of the sixteenth century,
the greatest in many respects in Matteo Bandello
(i48o?-is65), of Castelnuovo di Scrivia, a Dominican
who rose to the honor of the episcopate. Without ar-
ranging his two hundred and fourteen tales according
to a definite design, he, like Masuccio Salernitano, pre-
fixed to each a dedication to some gentleman or gentle-
woman; and in dedication or in story he makes the
society of his time live again before our eyes. In his
work the historic elements nearly equal the imaginary.
Some of his tales refer to well-known events — the
Roman Lucretia, Alboni and Rosamond, the slaughter
of the Buondelmonti, the tyranny of Ezzelino, the Sicil-
ian Vespers — and we meet in his novels great ladies and
great courtesans, artists and writers, from Ludovico
the Moor to Giovanni of the Black Bands, from Isabella
Gonzaga to the Countess of Challant, from Leonardo da
Vinci to Machiavelli. Novel XL, of the first part, is
put into the mouth of Machiavelli. In Giovanni dclle
Bande Nere ("Giovanni of the Black Bands") there is
allusion to an experiment made by the Florentine sec-
retary of certain orders of infantry "of which he had
treated at length long before in his book on tke military
art." Bandello lacked, indeed, the vivacity and gayety
of the Tuscans; but as a compensation ke represents in
his own work the Italian novel in all its multiplex va-
riety; and although not highly tragic in sentimental
tales, nor wholly comic in the facetious, he always at-
tracts and delights.

Among the other novelists of the age, Machiavelli
takes a place by his Belfagor Arcidiavok ("The Arch-
devil Belphegor"), a tale of oriental origin, to which

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 197

the great writer has given an artistic setting; and Doni,
by the many tales scattered through his curious books;
and Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1546?), a Florentine, the
jovial and elegant author of discourses on feminine
beauty and of a very free version of Tlie Golden Ass
of Apuleius. In his Ragionamenti ("Arguments") he has
inserted tales and in the Prima Veste de' Discorsi dcgli
Animali ("First Discourses of Animals") has taken in-
directly fables and apologues trom the Panciatantra, an
ancient Indian book. Others worthy of mention are:
Ortensio Lando, of Milan, a paradoxical and whimsical
author, who wrote a variety of tales; Pietro Fortini, of
Siena, a voluminous and most indecent novelist; and,
finally, Luigi da Porto (1485-1529). This gentleman of
Vicentia, who, after serving as a soldier many years,
withdrew on account of infirm health into domestic
quiet, and devoted himself to congenial studies, wrote
admirable Historic Letters on the wars in Italy from 1509
to 1513. But he owes his fame to the novel Giulictta e
Romeo, full of dramatic passages, and written with purity
and elegance of language. From this, though not di-
rectly, Shakespeare took the plot of his Rotneo and
Juliet; as often in his masterpieces he drew from some
one of our novels the subtle fabric which he amplified
and magnificently embellished.

The court society of the cinquecento, whose manner
of thought and feeling is reflected in the poems of
chivalry, is directly represented in the treatises on cour-
tesy and fine manners by Castiglione and Delia Casa.

Count Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), of Casatico
near Mantua, a famous litterateur, skilful diplomat, and
perfect courtier in the better sense of the word, lived
during the most splendid period of the Renaissance,
when in the noonday light of art and poetry the finest
qualities of the Italian mind had a medium for mani-
festing themselves in the intellectual refinement of life

\
198 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

among our aristocracy. The Cortegiatw ("Courtier"),
published about the time that the first edition of the
Furioso saw the light, is a sort of compilation where
old and new are blended and the glorious records of
the classic world do not prevent the author from hav-
ing in mind always the tendencies, tastes, and manners
of his own age. Varied elements are harmoniously
united — literary and artistic, aristocratic ideality and
practical conceptions, never gross or plebeian. Casti-
glione labored ten years over his book, changing and
improving with that fastidiousness of the true artist
which we have met with in Ariosto and Bembo. The
Cortcgiano was finally issued in 1528. It is in the form
of a dialogue concerning the qualities necessary to a
perfect gentleman of the court, supposed to take place
at Urbino at the time when the flower of the literati
of Italy gathered about Elisabetta Gonzaga and Emilia
Pio. Few Italian writings of the century are more
graceful or of more substantial value. One feels that
it is worthy of the pen of a cavalier and humanist, the
friend of Raphael and Bembo, equally skilled in treating
gravely negotiations of state and entertaining with ami-
able gayety a company of ladies.

The famous Galatco of Monsignor Giovanni della Casa
(1503-1556), of Florence, Archbishop of Benevento, then
nuncio at Venice, and at last Secretary of State of Paul
IV, has been issued in numerous editions from 1558,
when it was first published, down to our day, has been
translated into various languages, and is everywhere re-
garded as the code of good breeding. Thus Italy, which
displayed before the astonished eyes of the foreigner
the splendors of the courts of Mantua, Ferrara and Ur-
bino, has the credit of having instructed Europe in ele-
gance of manner and aristocratic urbanity. This book,
polished in style and with a soupgon of good-humored
wit, a mirror of the times, and the fruit as well of the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 199

special aptitudes and classic erudition of the author, is
a companion-piece to Castiglione's Cortegiano.

Not to be passed over in the list of works on Italian
manners in the sixteenth century are the literary and
philosophic treatises that have come down to us regard-
ing love and woman; for they contain theories not alien
from the common mode of feeling, hints as to usages
of the time, records of events and persons illustrating
the theories advocated — to say nothing of the help they
give us in forming an idea of the varied fortunes of
the works of Plato and Aristotle in that age. The prin-
cipal authors of such treatises are Bembo, Mario Equi-
cola, Giuseppe Betussi, and Leone Ebreo. Bembo pub-
lished in 1505 a book of dialogues with the title Asolani,
so called from the castle of Asolo, the residence of
Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, where the dia-
logues are supposed to have taken place. They do not
follow the lines of the Platonic symposium so much as
of the Ameto of Boccaccio, and they contain subtle dis-
quisitions upon love in a prolix and artificial style, with
philosophic canzoni scattered through the prose. Equi-
cola, a litterateur and historian born in Alvito near Ca-
serta, but living for a long time at the court of Mantua,
offers a collection of the most authoritative opinions
on the same subject in his Nuovo Cortegiano ("New
Courtier"), and especially in his Book on the Nature of
Love, which, like Asolani, has had a wide circulation.
Betussi, a Bassanese, shows less originality in his Dia-
logo Amoroso and Raverta; and he owes much to Equi-
cola. Finally, Leone Ebreo, a Spanish Jew, treats phil-
osophic questions of a varied nature in his Dialoghi
d'Amorc ("Dialogues on Love").

Treatises on all sorts of subjects flourished in this
century : on the point of honor and the duel, on strategy
and military science, on games, dances, horsemanship,
on fishing, on the chase, on the education of sons, on

200 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

agriculture. There were some notable essays on poetic
art; and among the treatises on historiography particu-
lar mention should be made of that by Francesco Pa-
trizi (1529-1597), of Cherso, an island between Istria
and Dalmatia. In his book are set forth, with acumen
and according to modern standards, the aims of history,
its classes, and the dignity and authority of historic dis-
cipline. The dialogue form, inherited from Plato, Lu-
cian, and Cicero, is common to the greater part of six-
teenth-century treatises, and it served also for works
that instructed by amusing and satirizing, like the
Capricci del Bottaio ("Caprices of a Cooper") and the
Circe of Giovan Battista Gelli (1498-1563), a shoemaker
of Florence, in love with books and study, President in
1548 of the Florentine Academy, and in 1553 deputed to
interpret Dante's Commedia, concerning which, as well
as on Petrarch's cansoniere, he left important lesioni. In
the Capricci, with Lucianesque imagination that recalls
certain contrasti of the Middle Ages, Gelli imagines that
Giusto, the cooper, and his soul hold arguments for ten
successive mornings upon diverse subjects. His inten-
tion was to prove that man, even when practising one
of the mechanic arts, may not neglect the liberal arts.
And in Giusto he symbolizes popular error insinuated
into the mind by vicious education; while in his soul
is symbolized the judgment of the reason exercised in
reflection and illuminated by the light of truth. In the
Circe, Ulysses questions his companions who have been
transmuted into animals by the famous sorceress of the
Odyssey, and all except one refuse the offer of being
turned back into men, with reasonings giving a witty
representation of the miseries of human life. This in-
vention, taken in a special way from the Grillo of Plu-
tarch, is written naturally with mastery of style.

If to all this we add the considerable number of ora-
tions, at times not destitute of vigor and eloquence,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 201

like those of Bartolommeo Cavalcanti, Guidiccioni, Delia
Casa, and especially the Apologia of Lorenzino de* Me-
dici (1514-1548), where he defends and glorifies his ty-
rannicide, moving straight to its aim, lucid, concise, all
nerve; if we take account of the Epistolarii, that with
scant sincerity but much elegance were written, ar-
ranged and published by almost all the men of letters;
we shall see no cause for wonder at the circulation of
even our prose of this century outside of Italy, and the
influence exerted upon foreigners by the Cortegiano, the
Galateo, the dialogues of Gelli, and Equicola's treatise
upon love.

CHAPTER VII

LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF THE CATHOLIC
REACTION

URING the second half of the sixteenth century,
the absolute predominance of Spain in our pe-
ninsula, and the Catholic reaction through the
Council of Trent, while restraining thought,
impressed a special character upon art, preventing some
of its forms from farther development, and changing the
course and spirit of others.

We have seen that the science of statecraft had found
expression most full and most happily adapted to the
relation and the analysis of historic events in the last
years of Florentine liberty. This having been swept
away, deliberation and counsel had to be in secret; for,
of the Italian States subject to Spain or ruled despotical-
ly, no other was in a condition to receive the glorious
heritage. But later, with other tendencies of thought,
the secular Republic which was the extreme bulwark
Of Italianitd had a conspicuous representative in political

202 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

literature — Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), a Venetian; and
in Savoy, Giovanni Botero (1540-1617), of Bene in Pied-
mont, who has been called "the prince of the mediocre"
in political thought, nourished in the closing years of
the century.

Paruta, chosen in 1579 by the Council of Ten as his-
toriographer of the Serenissima, was a learned student
of historic and philosophic science and at the same time
a diplomat versed in public affairs. In 1596 he was
Procurator of San Marco, the office of greatest dignity
after that of the Doge, and in the last years appears to
have been very close to that dignity. All this may be
learned from the reading of his works in Italian prose,
a mirror of the mind of the author and also of his
time, above which, moreover, he rose by the force of
his genius. In the Perfesione delta Vita politica ("Perfec-
tion of Political Life") he gives a masterly description
of his imagined model of citizen and statesman. In the
Discorsi politici he investigates the causes of the gran-
deur and the decadence of the Romans, and treats of
modern governments, especially that of Venice. Note-
worthy, also, are his History of the War of Cyprus (1570-
73) and the Venetian History (1513-1551) in twelve books
in Italian (the first four in Lathi also), written by or-
der of the Republic.

Contemporary with Paruta was Botero, who repre-
sents more faithfully than Paruta the spirit of reaction
that pervaded a great part of Europe in the last years
of the sixteenth century. He was a disciple of the
Jesuits, and bequeathed them his property and desired
to be buried in their church in Turin. He preached at
Milan, and was secretary to Carlo and afterward to
Federigo Borromeo. From the Duke of Savoy he re-
ceived in 1604 the abbacy of San Michelo della Chiusa.
His most praised and most characteristic work, the
Ragione di Stato, in ten books (1589), aptly defined by

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 203

De Sanctis as the "code of conservatives," was designed
as an antidote to the immoral teachings of Machiavelli.
But Botero, making religion the foundation of the proper
political edifice, permits or counsels violence and dis-
simulation in its service, and thus he is not so far away
from the methods that the Florentine Secretary recom-
mends for reaching his own supreme end, the forma-
tion and conservation of the State. Yet, by reason of
many acute observations and many wise precepts, this
and his other works, written in a style inelegant but con-
cise, are even to-day held in estimation by economists.

While, from the causes just indicated, historical in-
vestigation of first causes and ultimate results, with the
inner development and organic relations of historic
events, which had given to Italy a Machiavelli and a
Guicciardini, lay in chains in our unfortunate peninsula,
there were not lacking many who devoted themselves
to simple history, more or less impartial, according to
the authors and the States. In Latin, Cesare Baronio
da Sora, who rose in 1596 to the honor of the purple,
wrote the Annalcs Ecclesiastici, a most important history
of the Church down to 1198; and Giampietro Maffei,
a Jesuit of Bergamo, detailed the operations of his So-
ciety in the East Indies. In Italian, besides the Vite
di diciasctte confcssori di Cristo ("Lives of Seventeen Con-
fessors of Christ"), there were at this time notable his-
toric works by two Neapolitans, Angelo Di Costanzo
and Camillo Porzio. To the former we owe a History
of the Kingdom of Naples, in twenty books (1581), from
the death of the Emperor Frederick II through the
wars in the time of Ferdinand I (1250-1486), a work
valued for its form and its historic importance. Various
writings of Porzio are extant; among them is the Con-
giura dei Baroni ("Conspiracy of the Barons"), written
in 1565, an account of the famous conspiracy of 1486,
not worthy of the authority ascribed to it, since it is

204 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

contradicted in many places by documents and the tes-
timony of chroniclers contemporary with the events re-
corded, but commendable for its style, formed upon
Sallust and Machiavelli.

Another historian and translator of histories who
flourished in the second half of the century, was es-
pecially distinguished for his style. Bernardo Davan-
zati (1529-1606) was a Florentine of the ancient nobil-
ity, engaged in commerce and at the same time de-
voted to study and to academic work: He published
in 1602 a work of strong Catholic sentiment, Scisma
d'Inghilterra ("The Schism of England"), an abridgment
of the Vera et sincera historic, schismatis Anglicani, by an
English Jesuit. He wrote in a concise and vigorous
style, aiming to emulate the nervous restraint of Taci-
tus. He also translated the work of Tacitus into Ital-
ian, with the design of showing how "concise and
subtle" is the Florentine speech, and how much energy
(fierezza) there is in it. The translation does not, in
truth, give a faithful idea of the spirit of Tacitus; but,
most original and effective it seemed to Foscolo and
the most marvelous that ever was seen. In it Davanzati
draws freely from existing Florentine usage, not be-
lieving "that a living language should be obliged to have
recourse in writing only to the vocabulary of a few
dead authors, but should draw from the perennial foun-
tains of the city the most vivid and effective natural
expressions, which fly with impetus and reach the mind
by the shortest and quickest path, many times carrying
a significance beyond their strict meaning." Another
noble Florentine, Filippo Sassetti (1540-1588), also de-
voted equally to commerce and to study, resembled
Davanzati in this matter of language. Besides a Difesa
deUa Commedia di Dante, a Discorso contro I'Ariosto, a Vita
del Ferrucci, and other writings, he left Lettere full of
Curious and sometimes valuable information concerning

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 205

the Iberian peninsula, and more upon the Indies, where
he spent his last years, being there by commission of
a Portuguese merchant who had leased the trade in
pepper from the King of Spain. In this notable cor-
respondence the subtle vivacity of the language and the
novelty and finesse of the observations seem about
equally praiseworthy.

On the other hand, substance only, and not form, gives
value to the work of Scipio Ammirato (1531-1601), of
Lecce, who went to Florence in 1569, and was accom-
modated in the Medicean palace and entrusted with the
task of recording the history of the city from its foun-
dation to his own time. Before his death he was canon
of the cathedral. Exact, cautious, scrupulous in the ex-
amination and interpretation of old chronicles and state
papers, he anticipated the modern method of using his-
toric sources in his History of Florence (1600), in the
Opuscoli ("Pamphlets"), and in the genealogies of il-
lustrious families. He was scandalized by the wilful er-
rors and the ingenious hyperboles of Machiavelli, who
had covered a part of the same events. In consequence,
Ammirato takes precedence of all the other historians
of this epoch. The industrious Francesco Serdonati,
born at Lamole near Florence in 1537, who wrote and
translated many works, was mainly a voluminous com-
piler.

While unfavorable to modern historic methods and
criticism, the conditions in the second half of the six-
teenth century were propitious for research in antiqua-
rianism, epigraphy, and ancient history, which is calcu-
lated to divert the intellect and the soul from the con-
sideration and realization of present evils.

There were, therefore, famous writers in these depart-
ments who busied themselves in dispelling the thick
darkness enveloping the arts, customs, laws, and monu-
ments of the remotest ages. One of them, Onofrio Pan-

206 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

vinio (1529-1568), of Verona, passed a great part of his
short but active life in the service of Cardinal Marcello
Cervini — Pope Marcellus II — and from 1565 was cor-
rector and reviser of the books in the Apostolic library.
He illustrated Roman antiquity, mainly from his col-
lection of epigraphs. Most of his learned works re-
mained incomplete in consequence of his early death
and from his ardent desire to know and make known
to others his discoveries, which carried him rapidly from
one subject to another. But he shed light upon them
all, opening untried regions for the activity of the stu-
dious.

Following the same line of work, and in many re-
spects the superior of Panvinio, was Carlo Sigonio
(15237-1584), of Modena, one of the most original and
profound intellects of the century, and the best precur-
sor of Ludovico Antonio Muratori, who, writing in
Latin, not only made most useful contributions to the
knowledge of Roman laws and institutions, but in a
history of Italy from the arrival of the Lombards to
1199 — continued afterward by him to 1286— the result
of his researches among state papers and in chronicles,
gave a serious example of criticism, and by deciphering
old documents opened a path into the intricate forest of
mediaeval antiquity. Sigonio was a philologist as well
as a historian; and his contests with Francesco Robor-
tello, of Udine, a conspicuous representative of humanis-
tic tradition, are celebrated. But in philologic learning
no one then attained to such authority and fame as Pier
Vettori (1499-1585), a Florentine, Professor of Greek
and Latin in the Studio of his native city. His honor-
able and enduring fame rests upon his editions of and
commentaries on Aristotle and Cicero, the illustrations
accompanying certain Greek texts published by him for
the first time, and on the Vance Lectiones, a monument
of classic learning.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 207

In various modes and forms scholarship entered in
this era the wide fields that had been opened before it.
In that of language, the controversy left by the preced-
ing century was continued by Gelli in a Ragionamento
("Discourse"), and by Varchi in the Ercolano, a dialogue
so called from the name of the chief interlocutor, writ-
ten in 1560, where he declared Florentine the language
to be used in literature. On the other hand, Girolamo
Muzio (1496-1576), of Padua, a cultured and versatile
writer, but intolerant, published Battaglie per la difcsa
dell' italica lingua ("Battles in Defense of the Italian
Language"), contending for a composite vocabulary,
with revision of irregular words taken "from writings,
from provinces, and from cities." In the Varchina he
combated with acrimony what was said in the Ercolano
in opposition to Trissino, in a style skilfully malicious.
Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580), a Florentine, prior of
Benedictines, and afterward governor of the Hospital of
the Innocents, who passed most of his life in his native
city, with a deserved reputation for learning, was pas-
sionately devoted to the study of Dante. He was a
sagacious philologist, a versatile scholar, and an acute
disputant on the history and language of Florence. Fin-
ally, Sperone Speroni (1500-1588), of Padua, a man of
great authority as a critic and philosopher, develops for-
gotten arguments with grave and measured style in his
Dialoghi and in a great number of discourses, orations
and letters.

The revived religious sentiment, the direct and most
sagacious interposition of the Church in literary work,
and the influence of the Jesuits upon culture, gave rise
to a copious production of prose and verse on spiritual
subjects. Books of devotion of every kind were trans-
lated from Latin, Spanish and French, and new ones
were written; sacred rhymes were composed by almost
every one, and most of them were collected into can-

208 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

zoniere; Petrarch and Ariosto were spiritualized; and
even the libertine novels of the Decameron were con-
verted into edifying readings. Even the amorous lyrics
assumed attitudes that were suited to the new direction
of thinking, while remaining in general faithful to Pe-
trarchism. To obtain an idea of it, one need only turn
over the leaves of any cansoniere of the second half of
the century. The event that most moved the heart and
the imagination was the battle of Lepanto, a great tri-
umph of the Cross over the Crescent. Italy, in chains
as she was, could not dream of any other triumphs and
was all exultation over that one, sang it in epic poems,
now deservedly buried in oblivion, culled episodes of
it to insert in other poems, and in innumerable lyrics
labored vainly to transfer the poetry of events into the
poetry of words.

A new literary species, of which there had indeed been
scattered examples in the popular tongue before this,
sprang into flower after the Tridentine Council, as a
result of the rekindled religious ardor. Poems on sacred
subjects were written by many, even some who in youth
had taken an opposite direction in their art. The most
notable, previous to Tasso's, was Le lagrime di v$\ Pietro
("The Tears of St. Peter"), by Luigi Tansillo, a result
of his licentious Vendemmiatore. In the Index of pro-
hibited books published in 1559, the honest Venosan
had, to his amazement, found his own works. In order
to have them taken off — as they afterward were — he
undertook to finish this poem, begun long before, to
atone for his juvenile fault. But the Lagrime did not
see the light till 1585, after his death. It was imme-
diately reprinted in many editions and translated into
Spanish and French. Nor, given the spirit of the times,
could it be otherwise; since, rather than a work of art,
it is a series of one thousand two hundred and seventy-
seven octaves divided into fifteen cantos or pianti (lam-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 209

entations), with hardly a pretense of action where, in
the protagonist St. Peter, the poet represents the vari-
ous states of a penitent's soul in diverse places and cir-
cumstances. Some affecting passages and some happy
imitations of Sannazzaro occur in the work, like oases
in a desert.

And oases in the desert are the sparse artistic beau-
ties met with in the didactic poems, for example, in the
Caccia ("Chase") in ottava rinia by Erasmo da Valva-
sone, a noble Friulan, author also of an Angeleidc ("An-
geliad") on the war between the angels and the de-
mons, and of Lagrime ddla Maddalcna ("Tears of the
Magdalen"). Bernardino Baldi (1553-1617) wrote the
Nautica ("Art of Navigation"), a poem deserving a place
beside the Coltivazione of Alamanni, and by that jewel,
Rucellai's little poem in blank verse upon Le Api ("The
Bees"). Baldi, a native of Urbino, was a voluminous
writer and a good linguist, to whom we owe eclogues,
epigrams, varied rhymes, Latin poetry, translations from
the Greek, and prose works, among which some Lives
of the Mathematicians and biographies of Frederick II
and Guidobaldo I of Montefeltro, Dukes of Urbino, are
noteworthy. The Nautica is in four books and is a skil-
ful imitation of the Gcorgics of Virgil, and in some parts
of the fifth book of the JEneid; it teaches how to con-
struct and manage a boat, and gives a poetic coloring
to the arid subject. The blank verse is managed with
a dexterity worthy of this graceful writer.

Not less than to such didactic poems do the Balia and
the Podcrc by Luigi Tansillo, bear relation to the capitoli
which were written upon jocose subjects. La Balia ("The
Wet-Nurse"), published after 1552, is an exhortation to
noble ladies to nurse their own children. It is a happy
expression of a conceit expressed by Aulus Gellius in
the Noctes attica ("Attic Nights"), repeated by Macro-
bius in the Saturnalia, touched in passing by Tacitus,
U

210 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

taken up again and developed differently by Leon Bat-
tista Alberti in the second book of the Famiglia, and by
Speroni in a Discorso del lattare i figlinoli dalle madri ("Dis-
course on the Nursing of Children by Their Mothers").
Tansillo's poem has no relation to Speroni's dialogue,
but a close one with the long passage from Gellius,
if not with two papers of Plutarch; but the imitation
is free and judicious. In the Balia, the poet, who knows
by experience what trouble and inconvenience may be
caused by putting a child out to nurse, or receiving
nurses in the house, explains what he has experienced
for the admonition of others, reaching the same con-
clusions at which Rousseau arrived two centuries later.
The Podere ("Farm"), written in 1560, is divided into
three chapters; it is imitated from Virgil and from the
Latin Agronomics. In it Tansillo, taking occasion from
the purchase of a farm that a friend of his has in view,
sets forth precepts suggested by experience, inserting
among other things a domestic idyl, where one knows
not which most to admire, the soft and gentle move-
ment, or the real spontaneity of the praises of country
life. Avoiding the severity, sometimes dryness, charac-
terizing some of the poems regularly formed — with prop-
ositions, invocations and poetic mechanism — by Ala-
manni, Baldi, and Erasmo da Valvasone — Tansillo at-
tempts to instruct by familiar conversation, as Ariosto
had done in the satire on the choice of a wife.

During the second half of the sixteenth century there
was a disproportionate increase in the number of trage-
dies— a class of productions that, having become stupid
in its turgidity, adapted itself to the times and gave um-
brage to none. Some imitated the Grecians, others cop-
ied Seneca; the former, exaggerating immoderately the
simplicity they admired in their examplars, fell into
puerility ; the latter, increasing the doses of philosophiz-
ing and of atrocity, moved to laughter when they in-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 211

tended to bring to tears. Among the tragedies of Grec-
ian type, the Cresfonte of Giambattista Liviera and the
Mcrope of Pomponio Torelli make use of the same sub-
ject that later inspired Scipione Maffei and Alfieri, and
are not undeserving of praise.

Among the tragedies of Seneca's type, the Marianne
of the indefatigable Venetian poligraph, Lodovico Dolce,
in which a dramatic dress is given to the story of the
jealousy of Herod the Great, King of Judea, of his wife
Mariamne, was much praised by many, but is to be re-
membered only as one of the most characteristic of this
second manner. In it, Dolce, imitating not Seneca alone,
but also the Orbccche of Giraldi, was in good company.
Luigi Groto, called the Cieco (blind man) of Adria
(1541-1585), rhymester, orator, author of tragedies and
comedies despite his blindness, and therefore regarded
as one of the wonders of his time, wrote the Dalida
with a fantastic prologue similar to that of the Orbecche,
and, as in that tragedy, two children are murdered, and
three severed heads are brought in on a tray; only here
the atrocity is more refined and the hecatomb greater.
Antonio Decio da Orte is guilty of worse excesses, in
fact, of Neronian inhumanity, in his Acripanda. More-
over, he anticipates the manner of the following century
by his bombast and continual play of antithesis. This
and other synchronous tragedies riot in bloodshed, re-
minding one of the devices of charlatans to draw the
crowd to their booths.

Something better — not much is needed to surpass
these tragedies of butchery — is found in the historic
drama Cesarc, of Orlando Pescetti, in the Adriatia of
Groto, a dramatization of the novel Giulietta e Romeo, in
the Gismonda of Federico Asinari, Count of Camerano,
and in the Tancredi of Torelli, derived from Boccaccio's
novel of Gismonda and Guiscardo. The Torrismondo
(1587) of Torquato Tasso rises only in comparison with

FRANCESCO FLAMltif

these dramas. Embroidered fantastically upon the fabric
of the King CEdipus of Sophocles, in the chivalric element
it approaches the Arrenopia of Giraldi, and follows the
Aristotelian norm and the models of the Greeks. The
action proceeds slowly and heavily, and in parts where
one would most wish it to move, the sentiment stagnates
in the rhetoric.

The fortunes of comedy in these years were still sad-
der; only the Candelaio of Giordano Bruno merits par-
ticular attention. In it the comic and the satiric are
interlaced. The author represents three forms of the
insanity of men by means of a triple action joined in
one. In consequence, his comedy is varied, complex,
full of strange personages, madmen, villains, all acting
by the impulse of diverse passions. To sum up, it is
a review of the miseries, incongruities and monstrosi-
ties of human life, inspiring at the same time laughter
and reflection.

But in the second half of the sixteenth century the
regular comedy was driven from its throne by the Corn-
media dell' Artc and the pastoral drama.

Of the Comedy of the Arts, or Comedy of Masks,
also called tcatro a soggetto, where the dialogue was im-
provised by professional actors according to a pree's-
tablished plot, or scenario, the first experiments were
made, as it seems, between the fifth and sixth decades
of the century. The most ancient scenario that has come
down to us is of a comedy improvised and recited, with
the aid of others, by Massimo Troiano and Orlando di
Lasso, at Munich in 1568, on the occasion of a princely
marriage. Later, Cristoforo Castelletti, in the prologue
to the Torti Amorosi (1581), complained that to the reg-
ular comedy the people preferred "the chatter improvised
by an old Venetian (Pantaloon) and a Bergamasco ser-
vitor (the Merry-Andrew or Harlequin), accompanied by
four disgraceful actions." And he told the truth ; for the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 213

teatro a soggetto celebrated its first triumphs in the clos-
ing years of the sixteenth century ; and the rank flower-
ing and fruitage of this new plant caused the old to
wither by taking from it the air and the vital juices.

The pastoral drama arose also in this period, developed
from the mythologic fables and representative eclogues
current in elegant Italian society. To understand its
origin and raison d'etre, we must turn back to an earlier
period.

Together with the rural poetry which we saw reflect-
ing with candid realism the life of the country, a turbid
mass of pastoral poetry in the vernacular was poured
out among us, following the rise of the Latin bucolic in
the last stage of the Renaissance. It used rural life as
a medium for expression of sentiment and fantasies of
various kinds, not infrequently adumbrating events and
personages of the time under the veil of fictions after
the manner of Theocritus or Virgil. These eclogues
were usually in the form of dialogue, thus affording an
easy transition from the lyric to the dramatic form;
and, in fact, there is no substantial difference between
one of Sannazzaro's eclogues designed to be read only,
and one by Serafino dell' Aquila, which was acted
in Rome under Innocent VIII. It is easy to under-
stand how the eclogue, arranged for recitation, gradual-
ly assumed more and more the dramatic character. Af-
ter the noble spectators had acquired a taste for it, some-
thing less simple was prepared for them. Galeotto del
Carretto, Gualtieri da S. Vitale, Bernardo Bellincioni,
and Serafino Aquilano, gave variety of meter to their
eclogues and increased the number of interlocutors.
Castiglione in the Tirsi (1506) used the ottara rima
of the sacred representations and of rural poetry. I Due
Pellegrini ("The Two Pilgrims"), published in 1527, of
Tansillo, and the Amaranta (1538) of Giambattista Ca-
salio of Faenza, have simple plots. In the former, two

214 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

unfortunate lovers are about to kill themselves when
they are arrested by the voice of the dead lady of one
of them, whose soul is shut up in a tree. In the Ama-
ranta a shepherd and a nymph, crossed in their love,
would do likewise if they were not saved by Lucina.
But there were already theatrical compositions of con-
siderable extent. The Cecaria, or Dialogo di tre ciechi,
("Colloquy of Three Blind Men"), written in 1525 by
Marc' Antonio Epicuro, an ingenious and amusing
Abruzzian, is longer than / Due Pellegrini, for which it
was the model. But it belongs to a class somewhat
diverse, and partakes of the comedy and the farce.

From the Amaranta to the pastoral drama proper of
the second half of the century there are intermediate
steps; that is, a series of eclogues, more and more in-
terspersed with varied elements. Now they have the
multiform splendor of the mythologic drama inaugu-
rated by Politian with the Orfeo, now the lively fresh-
ness of the comedy. In the Sacrificio (1554) of Agostino
Beccari, of Ferrara, we have the first example of the
Italian pastoral drama; it rises to the height of art,
though not independent of Greek romance, which was
translated and freely circulated among us at the time.
The Aminta of Torquato Tasso was written and acted
at Ferrara in 1573. And // Pastor fido ("The Faithful
Shepherd"), by Giovanbattista Guarini, was presented
in homage to Carlo Emanuel I, Duke of Savoy, in 1585,
and was printed and published five years later.

In the Aminta Tasso gave Italy the most perfect ex-
ample of its class, as in the Jerusalem Delivered he en-
riched it with the most perfect epic. The pastoral is a
masterpiece, as much by the delicacy of the sentiment
as by the exquisite form and the melodious verse. The
action is simple, developed through a series of graceful
idyls in five short acts, each closing with a chorus of
shepherds. Aminta, who has long tried vainly to gain

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 215

the love of Sylvia, throws himself over a precipice on
hearing a false report of her death. But the fall does
not prove fatal ; and by this highest proof of fidelity and
self-sacrifice he gains the heart and hand of the maiden.

The excellence of the drama does not exist in the plot,
but in the gentleness of the affection, the graceful move-
ment, the plaintive elegiac tones; it has something of
the modern spirit and seems to prelude the better pieces
of the sentimental literature of Europe. In an age when
delicacy of conceit and of form was above all sought
and enjoyed, this drama was naturally received with
great applause even outside of Italy.

For the same reason, the Pastor fido, written by
Guarini in emulation of the Aminta, found admirers,
translators and imitators in other countries. This Fer-
rarese gentleman (1538-1612) served not only the House
of Este, but Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy, the Gon-
zagas of Mantua, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He
was arch-consul of the Crusca and chief of the Umoristi
of Rome. After proving himself a lyric poet of refine-
ment and elegance, he took in hand his Pastor fido, "a
pastoral tragi-comedy," which was acted for the first
time in Crema in 1596. In this most fortunate pastoral
drama he introduced varied elements of art, interwove
many actions, and gave to the lyric parts great fulness,
deferring to the taste of the time in artificiality of con-
ceit and in sentimentality.

This artificiality is in evidence also in the prose of
the time, which is animated by an affected and pompous
solemnity. But in the writings now to be mentioned,
and in some others, the changed spirit of the times is
manifest in the content mere than in the form. The
novel form, which continued to be cultivated by au-
thors of some merit, indecent and licentious as it had
been, is, in general, moralizing. Thus Giambattista
Giraldi, whom we have seen giving to the drama the

216 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

purpose of reforming manners, also directed to this end
his Ecatomithi in 1565. It consists of a hundred novels,
supposed, as usual, to be told by a company of men and
women flying from a public calamity — not to the coun-
try, but sailing toward Marseilles. The public calamity
in this case is the famous sack of Rome in 1527. The
tales are properly one hundred and thirteen, ten of the
thirteen serving as introductions and the other three re-
ferred to and given incidentally. Giraldi wishes that
every one may find in his book a remedy for the evils
that afflict him, and together with it high moral and
civic instruction. He shows the clergy a respect that
has no example in preceding novels; he draws an ideal
society essentially different from that of his time; and,
finally, he puts his stories into the mouths of persons
serious and well-bred.

Another collection of the same kind is the Sei giornate
("Six Days"), written in 1567 by Sebastiano Erizzo
(1525-1585), a patrician of Venice. It is a narration of
"diverse happy and unhappy events, in which are con-
tained noble and civil moral instructions." His thirty-
six tales are all designed to educate, and are interspersed
with reasonings and moral and political lessons.

In oratory the influence of the Council of Trent and
of the Counter-Reformation is still more manifest; since
there was at the time a great revival of sacred eloquence,
of which there had been a dearth after St. Bernard of
Siena and Fra Girolamo Savonarola, one in the first,
the other in the second half of the fifteenth century.
Cornelio Musso (1511-1574), of Piacenza, published five
volumes of sermons, and enjoyed merited fame for or-
thodoxy and eloquence. Francesco Panigavola (1548-
1594), of Milan, the most highly praised of the sacred
orators of the sixteenth century, wrote, besides many
sermons, a manual for the use of preachers. Epistolog-
raphy, too, though naturally less affected than oratory

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 217

by the changed intellectual conditions, was very largely
cultivated in the second half of the century. Annibal
Caro (1507-1566), of Civitanova in the Marches, may be
said to belong more to this age than to the one pre-
ceding. He is one of the most fecund, and, in respect
of art, most praiseworthy of sixteenth-century letter-
writers. His best work was written in the last decade
of his life and then rose to high reputation, which has
endured, with unavoidable abatement, even to our day.

1° J553 Caro had written a canzone beginning, "Come
to the shade of the great golden lilies," in praise of the
royal house of France, by order of Cardinal Alessandro
Farnese, his lord, who, like other members of this prince-
ly house, rewarded his servitors with honors and emolu-
ments. The poem, highly praised by many, was bitterly
criticised by Ludovico Castelvetro. The result was a
controversy between the letter-writer of the Marches
and the learned and pugnacious Modenese, which is
celebrated in our literary annals by the noise it made
and by the fierce extremes to which both parties were
carried. For the rest, the writings to wkich it gave
rise form an extended series of a critical and polemical
nature, serving to give a complete idea of our intellec-
tual life in that century ; and there were still other clam-
orous contests. Anton Francesco Doni (1513-1574)
was an eccentric Florentine, author of writings whim-
sical even in their titles, — La Zucca, I Marmi ("Marbles"),
/ Mondi ("Worlds"), / Pistollotte ("Great Pistols"), and
others, but singularly vivacious and rich in varied in-
formation. He assailed Aretino and Lodovico Domen-
ichi, or rather he persecuted Domenichi a entrance;
his victim was one of the many poligraphi, voluminous
writers, indefatigably busied in making the printing-
presses groan. Two celebrated libelists who attacked
each other fiercely were Niccolo Franco, of Benevento,
and Pietro Pretino. The last-named belongs, in fact, to

218 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the first half of the century. But he has some traits
that characterize the whole century, and in turgid style
and wild imaginings preludes the next. The authority
he succeeded in gaining seems incredible, not so much
by his facile but muddy writings as by adulation and
unblushing servility. He received unstinted praise, hom-
age, and lucre, and they called him the flagello del
principi ("scourge of princes").

During the second half of the sixteenth century all
forms of art and literature showed signs of over-ripeness
and hinted of coming decay. The epic alone arrived
then at the climax of perfection; for a long period was
required to subject to the laws and regulations of Aris-
totle's Poctica that unkempt child of the Middle Ages,
the romance of chivalry. Ariosto had, indeed, attired
it in the Homeric and Virgilian fashion, giving it a new
start and a noble bearing; but a new spirit was needed.
Aside from metaphor, there was need that a change of
matter should correspond to the change of form. It
was necessary that a unique subject should be found,
highly epic, which at the same time could gather to it-
self, almost as cognate, the fictions of romance. Tor-
quato Tasso had most happily the opportunity of choice ;
singing the deliverance of Jerusalem, he resumed the
theme of the great struggle between Christian and In-
fidel, and gave it a worthy setting. For Boiardo and
Ariosto had, no less than Tasso, interpreted the national
and Christian sentiment in their stories of the events in
what may be called an Occidental crusade — the under-
takings of Charlemagne against the Saracens in Spain.

Torquato Tasso, son of Bernardo Tasso, the poet
mentioned heretofore, and Porzia de' Rossi, of a noble
family of Pistoia, was born March n, 1544, in Sorrento.
His infancy was passed there and at Salerno. In 1552,
the Viceroy of Naples having declared Prince Ferrante
Sanseverino a rebel and his fiefs forfeit^ Bernardo, who

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 219

was in the service of the Prince, went into exile with
him and was despoiled of his property, including his
house in Salerno. His wife was therefore obliged to
betake herself to Naples alone, where she was dependent
upon her relatives. But she did not relax her care for
the education of her son ; she sent him for two years to
the school of Jesuits. But, being cruelly treated by
her brother, she had to repair to a convent, sending the
little Torquato to his father at Rome, where he con-
tinued his studies. But in 1556, the Viceroy having in-
vaded the Pontifical territory, he was placed for security
with relatives at Bergamo, and shortly afterward he re-
joined his father, who had found protection with Guido-
baldo II, Duke of Urbino. Arts and letters flourished
at that court then, as in the period immortalized by Cas-
tiglione ; and it appears that the magnificent castle called
the Imperial, in the neighboring town of Pesaro, inspired
the young poet with the description of the palace of the
Cortesia, which is in the Rinaldo. He had a habit of
listening to the instruction given to the young prince
by renowned masters, and his mind was strengthened
by the study of mathematics. At the same time, he was
becoming expert in knightly arts necessary to the per-
fect gentleman. In Urbino he knew famous men of
letters, certainly to his advantage, and about -1558 he
made his first experiments in lyric poetry.

In 1559 Torquato went to Venice, where his father
was carrying his Amadigi through the press in that great
center of printing and libraries. Here he continued his
studies with special attention to the classics, while he
aided his father in his' literary occupations and fre-
quented the society of Venier, Molin, Girolamo Rus-
celli, Paolo and Aldo Manuzio, and other men of worth
— all this with such results that Bernardo even then
dared to hope that his son would make a "great man."
To this time, it seems, the first attempts at Rinaldo and

220 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Jerusalem Delivered are to be assigned. In Venice Giovan
Maria Verdizzotti, an ecclesiastic and litterateur of some
fame, author of lyrics in Italian and Latin, advised the
young Torquato to cultivate the epic in the classic man-
ner, at the same time studying Ariosto for style ; Danese
Cattaneo, a sculptor and poet of reputation, persuaded
him to undertake the Rinaldo. And in 1559-' 60 Torquato
wrote, in all probability, the beginning of a poem on
the deliverance of Jerusalem ; but, realizing the difficulty
and vastness of the subject, he composed in the mean-
time, in order to "make himself to know," the Rinaldo,
easier and shorter.

In 1560 his father entered him at the University of
Padua, where he attended against his will to the study
of the Pandects. He consoled himself by frequenting
the houses of Speroni and Giovan Vincenzo Pinelli, cele-
brated literati, and still more by singing di Rinaldo gli
ardori e i dolci affanni ("The ardors and the sweet afflic-
tions of Rinaldo"). But his martyrdom was of short
duration; the next year Bernardo allowed him to take
the course in philosophy and eloquence. So Torquato
had the opportunity to learn from Sigonio the Aristo-
telian precepts to which he sought to conform his Ri-
naldo. That poem was published at Venice in the sum-
mer of 1562, and brought great praise and fame to the
author, who was but eighteen years of age.

The third year of study Tasso passed at Bologna, but
he did not complete the fourth; for in January, 1564,
convicted of having written certain satires, he was
obliged to flee. He was then received at Padua by the
young Prince Scipione Gonzaga, who had instituted an
academy in his house, and in this he read some verses,
written in part for Lucrezia Bendidio, a noble maiden of
Ferrara, known to him the first time he was in Padua,
and in part for Laura Peperara with whom he fell in
love at Mantua in the holidays of 1564. He finished

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 221

his studies the following year, and entered the service
of Cardinal Luigi d'Este in Ferrara, without any definite
office, but with full leisure to continue the poem on the
liberation of Jerusalem, which he had taken up again.
Here his facile and limpid vein of poetry, his fine pres-
ence, his manners of the gentleman expert in knightly
arts, rendered him highly acceptable at the court of
Duke Alfonso II. And the discourses that he read at
the Academy of Ferrara, among them some quite note-
worthy on the heroic poem, acquired for him a repu-
tation for learning. He was for some time in France
with the Cardinal (1570-71) ; then he entered into the
number of the household of the Duke, first temporarily,
then, in January, 1672, with a regular stipend, but al-
ways without fixed duties. In this time falls the com-
position of the A mint a, which he wrote and put upon
the stage on his return from a journey to Rome with
the Duke; but neither the effort spent upon this drama
nor other journeys in i573-'s deterred him from finish-
ing his great poem. The Gcnisalcmme Liberata was com-
pleted in April, 1575.

The work of composing was finished, but not that
of considering and revising. Doubts of every kind, es-
pecially in matter* of faith, a natural product of the
times, assailed the poet when he had hardly lifted his
hand from the work. In the same year he asked the
learned Pinelli to examine the poem canto by canto,
and was at Bologna to consult the inquisitor concern-
ing his religious scruples. He feared the censure and
the scandal that would be raised by the loves and the
enchantments inserted in a great Christian epic; and
he thought to avoid such a result by giving them a
symbolic interpretation, making an allegory of all the
poem, which in 1576 he set forth "most minutely." Nor
was this enough. He went to Rome, and asked many
authoritative literati there to subject his poem to a most

222 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

thorough revision. This took a long time; because the
judges in whose hands he had voluntarily placed himself
— to wit, Silvio Antoniano, Speroni, Pier Angelio da
Barga, a Latinist of reputation, Flaminio de' Nobili, and
Scipione Gonzaga — took the task much too seriously,
especially the first named, who, more pedantic than the
others, would have liked to transform the Gemsalcmme
directly into a religious poem, suitable for reading in
a nunnery. These obstacles embittered Tasso, justly
fond of the most beautiful creation of his genius — in-
deed, his mind was upset by them. In May, 1576, he
returned from Modena, where he had passed the Easter,
and was taken ill; and his health was hardly reestab-
lished when the blow of a staff on his head, treacher-
ously given out of rancor by an attache of the court,
aggravated his mental disorder.

After this, although at Modena, at Ferrara, at Comac-
chio, he continued to write sonnets and other verses,
which made him welcome not only among ladies and
gentlemen, but among the literati as well, Tasso gave
frequent and grave signs of madness, produced by reli-
gious delusions and by mania in regard to persecution.
He saw enemies everywhere; he feared that he had
fallen into heresy; in June, 1577, he wished again to be
examined by the inquisitor, who absolved him, but did
not succeed in quieting the mind fixed in the thought
that people were deceiving him to leave him in sin. It
is torture to follow that splendid intellect in its wander-
ings! On the evening of June 17, while he was impart-
ing his anxieties to the Princess Lucrezia, believing that
he was spied upon by a servant, who perhaps was watch-
ing over him, he drew a dagger upon him. For his
own security and that of others, he was confined, first
in a small room of the palace, then in the convent of
St. Francesco. The night of July 27 he succeeded in
escaping, and reached Sorrento, a fugitive and beggar.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 223

There he was lovingly received by his sister Cornelia,
and recovered his reason. He went to Rome with Car-
dinal Luigi and the ambassador of the Este; he asked
to be taken back into the court of the Duke, which was
granted; and he returned to Ferrara. But there was no
remedy; he was to have peace only in the tomb. With-
out any cause, he fled again July i, 1578, and wandered
through various cities. He was always on foot, and
crossed at last into Piedmont, so badly clothed that at
Turin the guards of the gate refused him admittance.
But he was at last permitted to enter because a friend,
Angelo Ingegneri, became security for him. Joining the
Marquis Filippo d'Este, General of the Duke of Savoy,
he seemed to regain a little peace. Of this time are
some poems and most beautiful prose pieces that do him
honor. But in February, 1579, without notifying any-
one, he took flight again, and returned to Ferrara in
miserable plight. The Duke was celebrating his third
nuptials, and had too many other things to do to give
audience to a poor maniac. No attention was paid to
him, and he broke out publicly into such insane invec-
tive that he was taken, shut up in the hospital of St.
Anna and put in chains.

For seven years the poet was kept in this asylum
for madmen, now assailed by black melancholy, by
frenzy, by hallucinations ; now intent to write, with com-
plete lucidity of mind, dialogues, discourses, and innu-
merable rhymes. He was not held in strict confinement;
he had the privilege of visits from friends, from princes,
from famous men of letters, among them Montaigne;
he was sometimes taken to walk, to Lenten services,
and to festivals at court. But the sudden frenzies to
which he was subject were dangerous; and therefore
the many friends whom he besought to obtain his re-
lease could not grant his request. Hence a continuous
mental struggle, embittered by the action of unscrupu-

224 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

lous publishers, who issued his writings in mutilated
forms, while he was powerless to prevent it.

In 1580 fourteen cantos of the Jerusalem Delivered were
published in Venice, entitled // Go ff redo ("Godfrey").
This induced Ingegneri, who may have had a better copy,
to republish it the following year; and in 1581 two edi-
tions were published in Ferrara by another friend of
Tasso, who could make use of the autograph copy.
These unauthorized publications were offensive to the
poet, but fortunate for us. Of his own will he would
have given us only the poem as it came from the Roman
revisers, that is, the Gerusalemme Conquistata which is
the title of the poem in the form to which it had been
reduced by his successive acts of penitence, and in which
he desired it to be read — a form which he labored to
prove superior in every respect to the one issued against
his will, but which posterity has justly buried in obli-
vion.

The last years that Tasso passed at the hospital were
embittered by the violent literary controversy over his
poem, which was hardly published before it was sub-
jected to censure as well as praise. In 1584 a little
work published by Camillo Pellegrino with the purpose
of proving the Gerusalemme superior to the Furioso, gave
the signal for a grand battle between the partisans of
Ariosto and those of Tasso. In this the poet himself
was constrained to take part, having been venomously
assailed, especially by the Florentine Leonardo Salviati ;
this he did by an Apologia, sensible and able, like the
other writings of this marvelous madman.

In July, 1586, Vincenzo Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua,
obtained permission to take the famous recluse of St.
Anna to his court. There he lived for some time in
tranquillity, and wrote, among other pieces, the Torris-
tnondo, published in 1587. But his restlessness soon re-
turned, and he resumed his wanderings through Italy.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 225

In 1588 he was at Naples, guest of the monks of Mt.
Olivet, in honor of whom he wrote the first book of a
poem in octaves, // Monte Oliveto. He passed the fol-
lowing years at Rome, Florence, Mantua, Naples, al-
ways unsatisfied, always troubled, often ill, but inde-
fatigably applying himself to literary work. Of this
period is his poem on the Creation, // Mondo creato, note-
worthy for many reasons; and at this time he published
the Gerusakmme Conquistata (1593), dedicated to his hosts
and protectors, Cardinals Cinzio and Pietro Aldobran-
dini, nephews of the new Pope, Clement VIII. He was
at Naples when he was summoned by the Pope to re-
ceive in Campidoglio the poetic laurel that had been
decreed to him. He went to Rome, but arrived in feeble
condition and fell seriously ill before the coronation
could take place. At his request he was carried to the
convent of St. Onofrio on the Janicular Hill, to receive
the benefit of the wholesome air; and there, on April
25» J595» ne closed his unhappy life. He was honored
by the Pope with imposing obsequies, attended by al\
the literati in Rome.

The literature left by Tasso is varied and abundant.
As a lyric poet he is the most productive of the century ;
and, though his canzonicrc are modeled upon Petrarch's,
still he is among the most original, by his flowing style,
the exuberance of ornament, and the variety of con-
tent. His verses may be divided into amorous, heroic
and sacred. Of the first class, those in which the senti-
ment is not shackled by the artificiality of the form rise
to the height of lyric excellence; but they are for the
most part expressions of courtly gallantry; and in the
madrigals the tenuity of thought is ill disguised by the
elegance of phrase. Again, the emptiness and coldness
of the heroic pieces in praise of this or that personage
are hidden under erudition, allegory and charming rhet-

226 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

oric. The sacred poems, springing from most sincere
and ardent sentiment, shine with much greater luster.

Le sette giornate del Hondo create ("The Seven Days of
Creation"), in blank verse, is not exempt from monotony
and prolixity; but in singing the origin of created things
from the Christian point of view, Tasso compares fa-
vorably, in some passages, with Lucretius. As a prose-
writer he was among the most famous of the century.
In the philosophic dialogues, written for the most part
during his imprisonment at St. Anna, where so great
a part is transfused with his mind and heart, there is
a singular intentness of the psychic faculties, as well
as lucidity of thought, sometimes even too subtle. In
these he develops, as Cesare Guasti well remarked, "that
philosophic doctrine which held the field for more than
a century: Aristotelian in principle, in form Platonic,
and afraid, in those days of Protestant and Catholic re-
form, both of denying too much and of conceding too
much; pagan in method and theory, though Christian in
purpose."

In the form of dialogue and in florid and ornate style,
he discussed also historic and literary questions. He
wrote orations, funeral eulogies, and didactic discourses
in great numbers. In his letters, amounting to more
than 1500, he left a precious mirror of his soul and of
his genius. For the letters, worthy to stand beside those
of Annibal Caro even by their noble self-restraint, while
they resemble Latin models, serve to reflect the emo-
tions inspired by sorrowful events of their author's life.

But Tasso lives gloriously through the centuries in
his Gerusakmine Liberata. His Rinaldo, which is a sort
of preamble to his great work, should be considered in
connection with it. In Rinaldo the young poet, imagin-
ing a simple plot with which episodes and accessories
could easily be interwoven, aimed to reconcile unity of
action — essential, by Aristotle's theory, to epic poetry—

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 227

with the freedom of invention proper to romantic poetry.
It is a short poem in ottava rima, revealing youthful en-
thusiasm in its glowing colors and fluid and harmonious
verse, and containing the germs of many episodes of the
Jerusalem Delivered, besides images and turns of phrase
and rhymes that reappear in the longer epic.

But the Jerusalem Delivered, written with the same
intent, is a work of quite other structure, import and
material. The subject was new and opportune at a time
when Islamism was threatening Europe ; when the stand-
ards of art were well settled — defined by the author
himself in three Discorsi suit' artc poctica cd in particolare
sopra il poema eroico ("Discourses on Poetic Art, and Par-
ticularly on the Heroic Poem"), in which he shows how,
even in this class of poems, enchantments, love-affairs,
and adventures can have ample space, provided that "it
is one, and one the form and the design," and provided
that things "are conjoined in such a manner that one
depends necessarily, or seems to depend, upon another,
so that if a single part is taken away or changed in
place the whole is ruined." According to this theory,
the Gerusalemme is in fact an organic work.

In this poem Tasso made use not only of the old
chronicles of the Crusades, especially that of William
of Tyre, but also of the Italia liberata of Trissino, and
profited largely from both classic and romantic sources.
In truth, the plot just outlined has close analogies with
those of the Iliad and the JEneid. Rinaldo corresponds
to Achilles, Argante to Hector and to Turnus ; the pious
Godfrey and the pious .Eneas resemble each other. At
the same time, Armida is Alcina; the wizard Ismeno
differs little from the wizard Atlante. The fusion of
the Virgilian and the Homeric with the Ariostesque is
constant and felicitous; and, as the best of the poem
consists of the episodes of love, of the vivid and alto-
gether human representations of feminine character—

228 FRANCESCO FLAMIN1

the impassioned Erminie, the brave Clorinda, the allur-
ing Armida — that element which is of the epic true and
proper owes its fortune to that which is romantic. "Im-
perfect romance, imperfect epic," as Guido Mazzoni says,
"the book gathers into itself and interweaves the va-
riety of the one with the unity of the other, unfolding
all with a slow elegiac melody anticipating the pathetic
tone of modern art." The troubled soul of the poet is
reflected in his poem; hence the language of love has
often a plaintive tenderness. In certain idyllic and sen-
timental passages of the Gerusakmme we meet once more
the author of the Aminta.

Many have pointed out the tinsel in Tasso's work,
among others Boileau, arbiter of good taste in France.
He is not wrong, in truth; for there is an excess of
imagery in the Gerusakmme, united to matter often ar-
tificial and an inappropriate luxuriance of antithesis and
rhetorical elegance. But these defects cannot obscure
the great beauties, nor do they prevent us from enjoy-
ing the harmony of line and the Spanish dignity of the
stanzas, so consonant to the majesty of the epic. Tor-
quato Tasso stands at the gate of the new age and is its
harbinger.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DECLINE OF LETTERS AND THE RISE OF
SCIENTIFIC STUDIES

tKe first half of the seventeenth century, Italy,
abased under the foreign yoke, bled by Spanish
governors, racked by the power of a corrupt
and lawless nobility, afflicted by the brutishness
and superstition of the populace, was naturally incapable
of pursuing literary work with vigor and fruitfulness,
and decay of art kept pace with political decadence.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 229

In poesy, the forms that had displayed the rank luxuri-
ance of their flowering during the classic age or at the
time of the Counter-Reformation, still kept, amid the
autumnal yellow, a streak of green, yet how withered,
dry and wan! An acute and restless desire for novelty
took possession of Italian versifiers; and, leaving the
manner of Tasso, which had been in lyric poetry for
the second half of the century what Bembo's was for the
first, Gabriello Chiabrera and Giambattista Marino ven-
tured into untried paths aside from the highway of Pe-
trarchism, the former keeping the classics in view and
following the Grecians, the latter carried away on the
wings of unbridled fantasy.

Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1638), of Savona, lived
honorably and tranquilly, alternating pleasant leisure in
his native city with temporary sojourns at the courts of
the Medici, the Gonzaga, and Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy,
who rewarded generously the offspring of his muse. He
wrote poetry "to please;" hence warm and sincere in-
spiration is lacking in his verses. In many canzoni, and
most in the heroic poems, where he took up the Pindaric
lyre, exalter of the Geroni and the Teroni, in order to
glorify one or another of his Maecenases, he labored
vainly to supply that deficiency, by exaggerations, by
hyperbole, by a confusion of inventions and mythologic
images. Better are his Horatian pieces, in blank verse,
preluding those of Gozzi and Parini; better, in a differ-
ent style, are his little didactic and narrative poems in
hendecasyllables freely rhymed. But the name of Chia-
brera would not have come down to us as that of one
of the most noteworthy poets of the seventeenth cen-
tury had it not been permanently attached to certain
graceful odicinc or canzoncttc in the short and flexible
measures of the French Anacreontics of Ronsard, and
other versifiers 6f the Pleiades. In this light class of
poetry, infinitely better adapted to the quality of his

230 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

mind and genius, he was more successful than many who
cultivated it before him, and gained the admiration even
of the moderns, although it is not immune from effemi-
nacy. His example was followed with success by Ot-
tavio Rinuccini (1564-1621), a Florentine, who also wrote
light canzonette, as well as some notable pieces in blank
verse, besides sapphics and sacred odes.

Giambattista Marino (1569-1625), a Neapolitan, rose
to fame as a great poet, seeking novelty in the extrava-
gant and wonderful, rather than in rare meters and in
imitations. He had a fervid genius and a mobile, exuber-
ant fancy; whence, "the marvelous" being sought as the
end in art, it is not easy to describe the excesses to
which he was carried by the mania to dazzle and amaze
his readers by a species of art pyrotechnics. In the Lira
("Lyre"), a collection of "rhymes amorous, maritime,
pastoral, heroic, lugubrious, moral, sacred and various,"
imitations of all kinds from ancients and moderns, Ital-
ians and foreigners, are fused in a new manner, recog-
nizable among a thousand; with glowing colors and re-
sonant verse, it is voluptuously sensual in the expression
of love, though finely cultured in imagery and in style.
Redundancy rather than bombast is the peculiar charac-
teristic of Marino in the Lira, in the Sampogna ("Reed")
in the Galleria ("Gallery") and others; for the chief of
a school is not to be confounded with awkward follow-
ers, who exaggerate his faults, as is always the case
with imitators. Sadly famous are the grotesque meta-
phors the ampulla et sesquipedalia verba of the Marinists.
They are also the characteristics popularly known of
that malady of artistic taste, which, having broken out
with special virulence in the secento (seventeenth cen-
tury), is called secentism. But in Italy the hyperbole
was only an ephemeral effervescence upon the constant
base of preziosita, that is, of refined gallantry; and in
Marino and the Marinists it represents an attempt to

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 231

achieve the new by grafting the subtle and the frivolous
on the sublime; they laboriously sought great beauties,
and succeeded only in finding extravagant conceits.

The subtle and the frivolous abound in the manner
of Marino, as generally in different degrees throughout
European poetry of the time. Nor did he need to go
beyond the Alps for examples and models of preziosita,
of which the most pleasing manifestations at the time
were in France; since it is a malady essentially Italian,
as is also Italian wholly the credit of having taught
Europe the refined elegance of court manners. In the
ruelles (literally, alcoves — predecessors of the salons),
where ladies reclined on soft couches planning new
fashions and coining new phrases, and going into ecsta-
sies over Mile, de Scudery's Carte de Tendre ("Map of
the Kingdom of Tenderness"), or over the Abbe d'Au-
bignac's Relazionc vcriticra del regno di Galanteria ("Veri-
table Story of the Kingdom of Gallantry"), likewise in
the Hotel Rambouillet, where an Italian lady presided,
and where they wrote masterpieces of coquetterie, the
books read and profited by were the commentary of Fi-
cino on the Simposio, and Equicola's treatise upon the
nature of love. The gdante, admired by the Society of
the Precieuses, and parodied upon the stage by Moliere,
is apparently a near kinsman of Baldassare Castiglione's
// Cortegiano ("The Courtier").

Marino indulged largely in these tastes. Therefore
there is nothing strange in the festal reception given
in his honor at the court of Marie de' Medici at Paris,
where, after many invitations, he went, in 1615, and
stayed eight years. He was the more welcome because
he had become famous, not only by his poetry, but also
by the honors he had received from Carlo Emanuele I,
whose secretary of state he was ; also by his bitter polem-
ics with Gaspare Murtola, ducal secretary and versi-
fier, and with Tommaso Stigliani, and by the imprison-

232 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

ment he had undergone for some time in Turin. The
Hotel Rambouillet opened its doors to him, and in that
hotbed of preziosismo he found models to imitate and
poets desiring to imitate him.

Of these last there was a superfluity in Italy, and of
what were they not capable? Sometimes they were
inspired to sing — and to sing in all seriousness — of la-
dies cross-eyed or otherwise deformed, sometimes of the
little creatures nesting in the golden locks of the be-
loved! The peninsula was deluged with a flood of mad-
rigals like those of Marino, singly or collected in vol-
umes, on the most varied subjects, from the adoration
of Christ to the poodles wagging their tails on the knees
of noble ladies. With Claudio Achillini, and with some
others, metaphorical speech became a habit of mind from
which they could not free themselves in their poetry.

Naturally, not all favored such extravagances. Maes-
tro Stopino (Cesare Orsini) derided them in the Capriccia
macaronica; Tassoni, Boccalini, Rosa, and others, did not
spare the lash on the sesquipedalian poetasters of the
metaphor. The lecentious boldness of the subjects treated
by Marino was displeasing to many — among his own
imitators, to Girolamo Preti; among the poets who took
an opposite path in art, to Ceba and to Ciampoli. An-
saldo Ceba (1565-1623), a Genoese patrician, a follower
not altogether negligible of the old Petrarchian tradi-
tion, resembled Chiabrera in method and in style. Gio-
vanni Ciampoli (1590-1643), a Florentine, while he imi-
tated the classics and Pindar, censured the overflowing
immorality of the lyrics of his time in a Poetica sacra in
verse.

Quite otherwise noteworthy than these two, but one
also averse to the vanity and licentiousness they con-
demned, as well as to the style of Marino, was the
poet Fulvio Testi (1593-1646), of Ferrara, a man of live-
ly genius but restless nature. In 1617, while he was

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 233

at the court of the Este in Modena, he dared to publish
a poem hailing Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy as the longed-
for restorer of the fortunes of Italy. Afterward, not
fancying the discomforts of exile, he retracted, asked
and received pardon, rose to high honors, and fulfilled
important diplomatic missions. Still, he desired a larger
field for his activity, and the desire was fatal to him.
For, in 1646, the Duke, having heard of certain manoeu-
vres of his to enter the service of the French, caused
him to be imprisoned, and while in prison he died.
This unsteadiness of character is reflected in his poetry,
which is varied in subject and tone. He began as an
imitator of Marino; but afterward he repudiated his
juvenile rhymes, deserting to the camp of the imitators
of Pindar and Horace. And to Leopardi he appears to
have had many of the good qualities of Horace — a judg-
ment to be taken with discretion, since, together with
its solemnity and its dignity, Testi's most lauded poetry
shows also considerable exaggeration of style. But in
some of his pieces on civic subjects there are new and
very felicitous movements.

Among the opponents of Marino, Tommaso Stigliani
(1573-1651), of Matera, has already been named. In
his verses there is some value not to be passed over;
and in contrast with the common fashion of that time
is his ridicule of the metaphors of the Marinists; still,
this might have arisen more from rancor than from clear
and well defined artistic principle. This principle was held
later by Pirro Schettini (1630-1678), of Aprigliano in
Calabria, who opposed the school of Marino. He took
Petrarch for his model, and among the Petrarchists, Di
Costanzo. The tumid and artificial manner of the cele-
brated Neapolitan poet was avoided without any overt
anti-Marinism, by some poets contemporary with Schet-
tini— that is, belonging to the generation following the
one just mentioned. These poets, who were much more

234 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

famous and more able than Schettini, were Redi, Men-
zini and Da Filicaia.

Francesco Redi (1626-1698), of Arezzo, was at the
same time a physician, a naturalist, and a writer of ele-
gant prose and verse. He took delight in literary study,
in philology of the Romance languages, and in dialectol-
ogy, studies that were about to rise to importance. It
is to his honor that he appreciated their value. In 1666
he began to lecture in the Florentine Studio on the Tus-
can language, and had among his hearers Menzini, Da
Filicaia and Alessandro Marchetti, who afterward pub-
lished a fine version of Lucretius in blank verse. The
Accademia della Crusca numbered him among the most
able cooperators in the new edition of the Dictionary;
he was an important member from the beginning of the
Academy of the Cimento, founded in 1657. Constrained
by the strife between the Grand Duke Cosimo III, and
his eldest son, Ferdinand, to row between two currents,
Redi did not reveal a character of adamant. But he
was upright, and found relief from the vexations of
court life in severe scientific studies, from which per-
haps he derived his aversion to the narrowness of the
schools, even in letters. As a poet he lives by a famous
dithyramb; for his love-sonnets are lacking, with all
their elegant correctness, in warmth of affection, and
the flowers that he transplanted from the gardens of
the doles stil novo have lost all perfume. In the dithy-
ramb, on the contrary, the correspondence of the rhythm
with the thought is admirable and admirable is its spark-
ling brilliance from beginning to end. It is entitled Bacco
in Toscana ("Bacchus in Tuscany") ; it represents the god
as celebrating the wines of Tuscany one by one ; and the
meter varies continually, as if to imitate the increasing
unsteadiness of the deity's gait.

Benedetto Menzini (1646-1704), of Florence, was a
pupil and friend of Redi. As a lyric poet he took a

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 235

course different from Chiabrera's, Pindar's and Anacre-
on's ; he celebrated glorious warlike enterprises — the de-
liverance of Vienna, the conquest of Buda, and others;
he also wrote little odes resembling those that go under
the name of the old man of Teos [Anacreon]. In many
passages he recalls Tasso, and Sannazzaro's Arcadia was
his inspiration for the Accademia Tusculana, of mingled
prose and verse. A judicious eclecticism is the promi-
nent characteristic of his verses, among which the most
important are seventeen elegies in tcrza rima on various
subjects and in frank imitation of Dante. The Arte
poetica, also in tercets, and in five books, the result of
much care and reflection, offers a notable example of a
class of composition then popular in Europe. For the
literati of the various nations in the seventeenth century
showed a common tendency to give receipts for the
beautiful, and to play Hippocrates to ailing poetry. Af-
ter Boileau, an abundant flowering of Arts of Rhetoric
in prose and rhyme appeared throughout Europe.

Vincenzo da Filicaia (1642-1707), a Florentine, is the
least free of the three mentioned above from the faults
of the century. He takes delight in sonorous language
and in rhetorical artifices. Even in the canzoni on the
siege and deliverance of Vienna, and in. the sonnets to
Italy, among these the famous

Italia, Italia, o tu cui fed la sorts

to which his name is especially linked, there is some-
thing forced in the style, and as always happens with
the forced, the result is an effect of falseness. To round
periods, to arrange words cunningly, to take more
thought for the sound than for the idea, was for him,
and will be for others, the thing most to be sought for
in poetry. But it is not to be inferred that his verses
are all dross; on the contrary, some are inspired by sin-
cere sentiment and by a fervid piety almost cloistral.

236 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Alessandro Guidi (1650-1712), of Pavia, has a strong
resemblance to Filicaia. He is especially noted for the
novelty of his canzoni libere (free songs — that is, free as
to measure and rhyme), of which form Leopardi after-
ward made admirable use. Guidi, too, has redundance
of epithet, and sports a Pindaric magnificence not seldom
out of keeping with the subject ; but in form and structure
his lines are terse and well considered.

As Tasso's lyric poetry was among the principal sour-
ces of inspiration for the greater part of the lyrics men-
tioned in this chapter, especially those of the first gener-
ation following him, so the many who cultivated epic
poetry in its various forms were all influenced by the
Gerusalemme Liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered").

The most important of these was Francesco Braccio-
lini (1566-1645), of Pistoia, who had neither great poetic
genius nor finely educated taste, but much imagination,
combined with great ease and fluency of expression. He
wrote a little in every style — lyrics, heroic and religious
poems, burlesque poems, pastoral compositions, trage-
dies, melodramas, letters in blank verse, and mythologic
fables — all good, commonplace, without forced conceits,
but with the mark of mediocrity. And the art of the
century was of this nature, so that he may be said to
give us an adequate example of the methods and char-
acters of the poetry of his time. In the Croce racqui-
stata ("The Cross Regained") he sang of the war of
Heraclius, Emperor of the East, against the Persians to
recover the wood of the Cross; the plot is well con-
structed; the style as well is imitated from Tasso. The
Bulgaria convertita, written by Bracciolini in his old age,
is a more feeble work.

The rest of the copious epico-romantic work of this
century will be found by the student to divide itself
into distinct cycles or groups. There are poems Biblical,
poems mythological, poems epico-religious, poems on

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 237

subjects of legendary history — those on Attila, for ex-
ample— poems upon contemporaneous events, poems in
which the romantic or chivalric element exceeds the he-
roic, and, finally, poems on the discovery of America.
This important event, so much of whose glory be-
longs to Italy, did not give rise then or afterward to any
great or notable addition to our literature. The best on
the subject is a fragment by Tassoni, I'Occano.

In the other categories some poems deserve men-
tion, as follows: The Amcdcide of Chiabrera, upon a sup-
posed expedition of Amadeus V of Savoy against the
Turks, who were menacing Rhodes; the Conqiiisto di
Granata by Girolamo Graziani, a passage of which Leo-
pardi seems to have had in mind when he imagined his
Consah'o; and the Enrico of Giulio Malmignati, which
suggested some incidents to Voltaire for the Henriade.
Above all these rises Marino's Adone ("Adonis") on a
mythological subject, a mass of fantastic narrative and
description, held together by barely a semblance of plot.
Most varied elements are placed in it side by side rather
than fused; the author has borrowed from the Greeks —
especially from Nonno's Dionisiaci — from the Latins,
from Italians, anterior and contemporary. But, notwith-
standing the lack of originality, the confusion of form,
the disgusting licentiousness — its worst defect — this vast
poem, by the color and resonance of the verse, by the
pictorial effect of some of its passages, by the feeling
it shows for nature, is the most noteworthy product
of our seventeenth-century poetry. Its importance is
attested by the acrid literary contests to which it gave
rise.

But the heroic poem could not reflect the life and man-
ners of a society like ours in that century, because it
was the opposite of heroic. Much more in consonance
with the times was the poem heroi-comic — a form not
new, but not yet hackneyed by use, or spoiled by abuse

238 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

— which, with humor often coarse and loud sarcasm, tore
away the veil of idealized chivalry from grotesque, pro-
saic reality. A true poet, Alessandro Tassoni (1565-
1635), cultivating this style of poetry, succeeded in pro-
ducing a work of art still living and fresh to-day, the
Secchia rapita ("Rape of the Bucket").

A bizarre intellect was this Modenese, subtle, pugna-
cious, and paradoxical. Tassoni passed a great part of
his life at the courts of Rome, Turin and Modena, but
vituperated and derided courtiers. He believed in the
climacteric year and other superstitions; but in his wrii
tings he fought against blind prejudice by flie light of
reason, and inveterate error by the light -of science. In
the Pensieri divcrsi ("Diverse Thoughts") he discusses
disconnected and unlike questions, moral, scientific, and
literary, without any order and all in confusion — al-
ways attacking the principle of authority — sometimes
puerile, but at other times acute, able, and with strange
forecasts of truths since confirmed by science. In the
Consider azione sopra le rime del Petrarca, not a philological
work or a commentary properly so called, but a literary
work "prompted by individual crotchets," he assails nar-
row Petrarchism with abundant erudition and stinging
ridicule; it occasioned an ardent polemic, which threat-
ened to be carried to excess. The Secchia rapita (1622)
is so called from a bucket taken by the Modenese from
Bologna in the thirteenth century, to recover which war
was declared. The humor arises from odd anachro-
nisms, grotesque types, as the Count of Culagna — an
opprobrious caricature of Count Alessandro Brusantini,
— and, more than all, from the contrast between the
trivial occasion of the war and the epic form according
to Aristotelian canons which is given to the poem, be-
tween the quite serious parts and the comic, at times
thoroughly buffoon-like in mockery. All Olympus is
moved for that bucket!

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 239

Tassoni's purpose in this poem was to parody the
epic of his time with humor something like that of Aris-
tophanes,— reckless and sometimes low. The Scheme
degli dei ("Scorn of the Gods"), by Bracciolini, published
four years earlier, but after the Secchia had been circu-
lated in manuscript, belongs to the same heroi-comic
class, but with substantial difference. It is not con-
structed in the guise of a serious poem-, nor is it in part
historical and in part imaginary; it is a fantastic bur-
lesque, intended to deride the pagan Olympus, from
which contemporary poets borrowed fictions, scattering,
in his opinion, the "pernicious seed of false religion" in
untutored minds. In the first fourteen cantos, thrown
off in a very short time, he introduces two famous myths
— the love of Venus and Mars and the love of Venus
and Anchises. The last six cantos, badly connected with
the preceding, relate the destruction of the gods by
Death and other fantastic incidents. Both these poems
are spirited and free in style and versification; but the
Secchia is far superior by its unity of design, by the
more artistic means to achieve the comic effect, by the
fuller satiric element, and by certain figures and inci-
dents that afford an image of the time.

Allied to the Secchia rapita are some other poems re-
lating comically heroic enterprises of war. The Asino
of the Paduan, Carlo Dottori (1618-1686), a writer prized
for his lyrics and tragedies, resembles Tassoni's poem
in that it develops historic action; it is founded upon
an anachronism; it derives its title from the ass painted
upon a standard taken by the Paduans from the Vicen-
tians; a tone of pleasant serenity and many curious
characters are to be found in it.

In the Catorcio d'Anghiari ("Padlock of Anghiari"),
the cause of war between Anghiari and Borgo S. Sepol-
cro is a padlock. The author of it is Federico Nomi of
Arezzo, author of verse of some merit. Bartolommeo

240 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Corsini of Barberino di Mugello made a novel Elisea the
cause of war in his Torracchione desolato ("Great Ruined
Tower"). The Catorcio has no merit but that of lan-
guage; but the Torracchione, having, like the Secchia, the
structure of a heroic poem and a gay and mirthful style,
does not lose greatly by comparison with its model. But
much more celebrated is the Malmantik racquistato, by
the painter Lorenzo Lippi (1606-1664), published pos-
thumously in 1676. Like the Torracchione it takes its
subject from an old castle, Malmantile; it is comic from
beginning to end. Lippi — to whom, as Baldinucci said,
nature had allotted a mirthful but honest vivacity and
eccentricity — seasoned his story with witty inventions,
and with Florentine jests and slang, on which Paolo
Minucci and Antonmaria Biscioni made erudite philologi-
cal annotations.

In an age of low morality and intellectual narrowness,
a congenial soil is afforded for poetry grossly ludicrous.
Giambattista Lalli (1572-1637), of Norcia, wrote profa-
nations, rather than burlesque travesties, of the Iliad and
the jEneid. The Franccidc and the Moscheide are poems
that present only a semblance of the heroi-comic, re-
sembling the burlesque poems of the preceding century,
without surpassing or even equaling the original Gi-
gantea. All the other forms or classes of jocose poetry
were cultivated as well. Pastoral poetry lost much of
its savor and fragrance in Bracciolini's Ravanello alia
Nenciotta and Risposta delta Nenciotta, and in Francesco
Baldovini's Lamento di Cecco da Varlungo. The pedan-
tesque poetry introduced in the preceding century by
Camillo Scroffa, better known by the name Fidenzio
Glottocrisio Ludimagistro, dropped its satiric character
and contented itself with laughter-provoking fun. And,
finally, the subtlety, real and sometimes profound, of the
macaronics of Folengo degenerated into the gross Latin
of Maestro Stopino,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 241

Less insipid seem to us the burlesque poems in the
various dialects — especially the Neapolitan— of which
Italy at this time had a profusion. Some good satire
is to be found in the very diffuse Fraschcrie ("Fooleries")
of Antonio Abati; in the essentially jocose poetry of
Giambattista Ricciardi; in the sonnets of Francesco
Ruspoli, pleasant to read for the Florentine style and
the fine distinctions in the choice of words; and in Gi-
anfrancesco Lazzarelli's work, gathered under the title
Cicceide. Certain sonnets of Tassoni, surpassing in many
respects the others of the century, are pure satires, or
rather maledici in the manner of many works written
in the sixteenth century and mentioned in their proper
places. In satire, indeed, the seventeenth century can-
not be said to have done badly; on the contrary, men
of real genius expressed themselves in this kind of liter-
ature who, though they often followed the fashion of
the times with hollow or perfunctory morality, like that
of the later books of Juvenal, yet often wrote freely from
the heart. The usual censure of women and the castiga-
tion of hypocrites are repeated to satiety in the satires
of the time. But Rosa, Menzini, Sergardi and Soldani
wrote some that are worthy to stand beside the best sat-
ires of the sixteenth century.

Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), of Naples, a great painter,
full of genius, versatile, enamored of every artistic ex-
pression of the beautiful, and, while living in times in-
clined to baseness, scornful of every kind of vileness,
shows vigor and candor in his satires in tersa rima, and
neither exaggeration nor affectation. The first satires,
wherein he treats of music, poetry, and painting, are
naturally the most attractive, as from the standpoint of
the artist; and his observations on the defects of con-
temporary poetry may be called, if not new, acute and
judicious.

Benedetto Menzini, already spoken of, is more caustic ;
II

242 FRANCESCO FLAMINl

he abuses his enemies and uses rough language; for the
rest, he is effective; his verse is easy and his rhymes
are spontaneous. Ludovico Sergardi (1660-1726), of
Siena, surpasses him in violence. Under the name of
Quinto Settano, he assailed Gian Vincenzo Gravina with
fury in his satires in the vernacular, and more felicitous-
ly in certain Latin satires of exquisite quality, which
were widely circulated.

Jacopo Soldani (1579-1641), a Florentine and scientist
of the school of Galileo, who was attached to the court
of the Medici, is especially to be remembered for one of
his satires defending the experimental method and the
discoveries of Galileo against the charlatanry of the false
peripatetics. His other satires are on commonplace sub-
jects. More feeble are some satires of Michelangelo
Buonarroti the younger (1568-1646), a Florentine and a
nephew of the great architect. The five long satires of
Ludovico Adimari, a Neapolitan, are declamatory and
moralizing. Bartolommeo Dotti (1651-1713), of Brescia,
whose evil-speaking cost him his life, wrote satires —
some in the Venetian dialect — that are mordant but
slovenly, even in the meter — quatrains of eights with
alternate rhymes.

Complete and lamentable decadence marks the tragedy
of this century. The forms of the classic drama and the
precepts of Aristotle were adapted to spiritual subjects
in a forced manner. The bizarre comedias de santos of
the Spaniards were imitated. Episodes of the Orlando
Furioso and of the Gerusalemme Liberata were reduced to
dramatic form. A dramatic dress was given to events
of contemporaneous history.

A certain breadth of conception gives value to the
Adamo of Giambattista Andreini, which seems to have
suggested to Milton the first idea of Paradise Lost. The
Aristodemo of Dottori is not bad in plot and dramatiza-
tion. The Solimano of Prospero Bonarelli, quite famous

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 243

in its day, is not lacking in well drawn characters and
eloquent passages. But these are oases in the desert;
in general, the seventeenth-century tragedy, sacred or
profane, impassioned or implesse, deserves to rest in the
profound oblivion that envelops it.

Nor did a more cheerful fate smile upon the pastoral
drama, which Tasso and Guarini had raised to so high
a plane of art. The Pastor Fido, susceptible by its com-
plexity of greater amplification or development, was
imitated more than the Aminta, gave occasion to literary
controversies, kept a place of honor throughout the cen-
tury, and inspired Guidobaldo Bonarelli, brother of the
author of the Solimano, to write the Filli di Sciro ("Phyl-
lis of Scyros"), which, despite its scant claim to original-
ity, is, for certain exterior merits, still held in honor
to-day.

Comedy, likewise, dragged out a languid and stinted
life. Giambattista Delia Porta (1535-1615), a Neapoli-
tan, who restored to new life in his comedies the plots
of Plautus and Terence, belongs properly to the close
of the sixteenth century, although he is placed here be-
cause his influence upon the Italian stage was exerted
in the first decades of the seventeenth. Among the
numerous comedies of this age, more or less colorless
and stupid, only two deserve to be noticed — besides
those of Andreini, a famous actor, who tried to reduce
to writing his improvised comedies. The two mentioned
are La Ficra ("The Fair") and La Tancia by the Buonar-
roti mentioned before. The former is not so much a
true and proper comedy as an animated representation
of the come-and-go vivacity of a fair, made chiefly with
the intention of gathering words and locutions of the
living speech of Florence for the use of the Delia Crusca
dictionary. The other is a pastoral farce resembling
those of the sixteenth century.
In the seventeenth century the best efforts of the

244 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Italians, in the direction of the stage, were all turned to
the "comedy of the arts" and to the musical drama or
opera.

Several collections of the scenarii, which served as
guides to the actors of the former in their improvisa-
tions, have come down to us. Some were new inven-
tions, others were taken from Latin or sixteenth-cen-
tury comedies; of course they were nothing but a mere
outline ; all the rest the actors, each of whom was accus-
tomed to play continually a fixed role, took from memo-
ry, rich in phrases made and speeches prepared, or from
a fertile fancy. The masks most used were those of the
two old men, Pantaloon and Doctor Graziano; the cap-
tain, type of the bullying coward, who is not so much
like the miles gloriosus of Plautus as like the popular cari-
cature of the Spanish braggarts ; and the two clowns, the
clever servant, and the silly servant — Brighella and Ar-
lecchino (Harlequin). For the most part, the characters
in each comedy were ten — seven men and three women;
that is, besides the masks just described, two lovers, two
prime donne and a maidservant. The companies, roving
about, were usually renewed every year. The actors, in
public squares, or in palaces and courts, were accus-
tomed to bid for applause with vulgar expedients — dis-
guises, grimaces, cudgelings, buffoonery and obscenity.
The musical drama, or opera, is more important, on
account of its later artistic development in Italy and
in other countries, and the vigorous and flourishing life
it enjoys to-day. Sprung from the pastoral stories, and
from the intermezzi of the comedies, through the influence
of the improved church music and the revived canto
monodico, the musical drama had its cradle in Florence
in the closing years of the sixteenth century in the work
of a famous singer and poet of genius, Ottavio Rinuccini.
With him was associated Jacopo Peri, a wonderful musi-
cian. The Dafne (1594) and the Euridice (1600), set to

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 245

music by Peri, enjoyed great success. For the same oc-
casion as the Euridice, Giulio Caccini set to music a
Rapimento di Cefalo ("Rape of Cephalus") by Chiabrera.
Music to Rinuccini's Arianna was composed in part by
Peri and in part by Claudio Monteverdi, the greatest
musician of the seventeenth century, the true creator of
dramatic music. From Florence the new drama spread
throughout Italy and among other nations, departing
from its primitive simplicity, drawing into itself new
elements. Popes and cardinals promoted and favored it.
In Venice it descended from the halls of the palaces into
the public theater, among the people; then, going on
to develop subjects mythological or romantic, it allied
itself to comedy and drew from it life and spirit.

The prose of the seventeenth century was better than
the poetry, some writers carrying on not unworthily the
revived traditions of the sixteenth. In this statement
the novel is not included; it flourished abundantly but
with little artistic value. The one original novelist was
Giovanni Battista Basile, who wrote fifty tales in the
Neapolitan dialect. Neither does it include the immense
number of romances — moral, political, social, and others,
besides the heroi-gallant after the manner of Mile, de
Scudery and other French romancers. But in history
and kindred subjects Italy could boast, during this cen-
tury, of such writers as Sarpi, Pallavicino, Bentivoglio,
Davila, and Bartoli.

Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), a Venetian of a family
of Friuli, possessed a broad and profound intellect, a
steadfast character and great scientific and theological
erudition. Having entered the service of his republic
as "theologian and canonist" in 1606, he maintained its
rights boldly against Paul V, who had laid it under an
interdict, and thus incurred the displeasure of the Pope.
His Istoria del concilia tridentmo ("History of the Council
of Trent"), published first in London in 1619, without

246 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the author's consent, under the pseudonym of Pietro
Soave Polano, is divided into eight books, covering the
period from 1502 to 1564. He deals with his intricate
subject, in which theological questions necessarily* take
a prominent part, without rhetoric or artifices of style,
and with nervous and lucid conciseness. Errors in the
stating of facts sometimes occur, and he is occasionally
led by party spirit to express judgments not altogether
impartial. But in the analysis of the disputes and de-
crees of the famous Council, the subtlety and precision
of the scientist are revealed. The work of Sarpi, what-
ever may be thought of his religious and political ten-
dencies, is a unique monument of thought and style.

Not less important is the history of the same Council
that was written to confute Sarpi by Cardinal Sforza
Pallavicino (1607-1667), a Roman, an austere and ac-
tive prelate, rich in solid culture, a devoted student of
style and language. Compiled from a great number of
documents furnished by Pope Alexander VII, his history
is of value for correcting Sarpi's in many particulars,
though the zeal of the apologist often carries him be-
yond bounds in the censure of the work he is opposing.
In form Pallavicino is the opposite of his predecessor;
he is as elegant, ornate, and rhetorical as Sarpi is plain,
concise, and nervous. But he has eloquent pages and
the praises lavished upon him by the critic Giordani were
in part deserved. Other writings of his are admired for
grace of style united to clear and well constructed ar-
gument— Del bcne, L'arte della perfesione cristiana, Vita
d'Alessandro VII, and others. In view of these it was
justly observed that Pallavicino, a Latinist, Della-Crus-
can academician, and author of rhetorical and linguistic
writings, contributed to free the treatment of religious
subjects from the narrowness of scholastic forms-

Guido Bentivoglio (1579-1644), of Ferrara, is worthy
to stand beside these two historians. Like Pallavicino,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 247

he rose to very high rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In 1607 he was sent by Paolo V as apostolic nuncio to
Flanders, where he stayed till 1615. During this time
he collected material for his Storia delle guerre di Fiandra
[("History of the Wars in Flanders"), written with
care as to form, with excessive gravity, and without any
truly adequate conception of the great event he under-
took to describe, but careful, well arranged and rich in
statements of fact. His name is especially connected
with this work; but his Memorie, composed during the
latter years of his life, are more attractive, by reason
of their lively style and the picture they give of the pon-
tifical court of the time. He wrote fluently in his hours
of leisure from political affairs; but none the less all his
work is marked by clearness and discernment.

Another historian of foreign contemporary history was
Enrico Caterino Davila (1576-1631), of Piove di Sacco
in Paduan territory. His two baptismal names attest the
gratitude of his family toward Henri III and Catherine
de* Medici. After the death of his royal protectors, he
took up the profession of arms and fought under the
Duke of Montpensier, remaining in France more than
fifteen years. During this time he gathered documents
and information for his Istoria delle guerre civili di Francia
("History of the Civil Wars in France") from 1558 un-
til the death of Henri III, in 1598. It was published
in Venice in 1630, and is noteworthy, not only for its
order and clearness, but for its vivid descriptions of
trans-Alpine men, places, and customs, during an event-
ful period in the history of our neighbors. Davila wrote,
if not always with purity of language, yet with natural
sprightliness, giving more attention to facts than to
words; and to these excellencies he succeeded in unit-
ing the impressiveness of Livy, by means of his frequent
disquisitions and descriptions. Hence the fame of his

248 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

work outside of Italy, and the reason for its translation
into French, Spanish, English, and Latin.

The Storia delta Compagnia di Gesu ("History of the
Jesuits"), by Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685), of Ferrara,
continues to be read for the graces of style and lan-
guage, in which respects it is almost unique. This
work, divided into parts according to the places to which
it refers, tells the story of the Jesuit missions in Asia
and of their operations in England and Italy. It is more
than anything else a rhetorical exercise; but it has
"dashes of prose," though the author is always in
search of more florid elegance. Bartoli was a stylist,
and understood all the arts for rounding the period in
a scholarly manner. He was afterward a lord and master
of the language, as he proved in his treatise, // torto e
il diritto del "non si piw" ("The Wrong and The Right
of the 'Non si puo ' "), in which, while he attacked the
dogmatism and the pedantry of those who could see no
salvation outside the trecentists, he claimed for waters
a liberty verging on lawlessness. But he paid too much
attention to form and too little to substance and ideas;
hence Giordani, his warmest admirer, was obliged to say :
"You will keep in mind innumerable brilliant phrases
of his, but no sentiment will you repeat; the admirable
is in the garments, not in the person." His great work
contains almost nothing of intrinsic value except the
descriptions of marvelous events, of countries, and of
customs.

At the same time with these historians, honest and in
general correct, there was no lack of adventurers, who,
professing to relate the history of their times, made
merchandise of their pens. Gregorio Leti, of Milan, in-
credibly industrious and voluminous, was the most no-
torious of these. Others have left copious and valuable
information in confused form, as Vittorio Sin of Parma
in the fifteen volumes of his Mercuric politico. Others

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 249

gathered material for the literary history of single cities
and regions, or treated of religious and academic cor-
porations. Gian Nicio Eritreo, otherwise Gian Vittorio
Rossi, a Roman, included all Italy in his celebrated
Pinacotheca, in elegant Latin, containing about three hun-
dred sketches of persons living in his time, many of them
being known to him. This and his other writings are
sources of history not to be neglected. Others that
should not be passed over are the Tvattato dell' arte is-
torica ("Treatise on the Art of History") by Agostino
Mascardi (1590-1640), of Sarzana, which has acute ob-
servations amid its overflowing erudition; and the Is-
toria della cittd e del Regno di Napoli ("History of the City
and Kingdom of Naples"), by Francesco Capecelatro
(1595-1670), of Naples, author also of an important
Diario upon the tumults of the insurrection of Masaniel-
lo; and two works touching the history of the fine arts,
praiseworthy for style and language — the Vite dei pittori
antichi ("Lives of the Old Painters"), by Dati, and No-
tizie dei professori di disegno ("Notes on the Professors
of Design"), by Balduccini.

Carlo Roberto Dati (1619-1676), a Florentine, and a
man of choice and varied learning, labored unweariedly
on the third edition of the Della Crusca Dictionary — the
first edition was issued at the end of 1612 — pursued sci-
entific studies, and in the lives of the four most famous
Grecian painters, Zeuxis, Protogenes, Parrhasius and
Apelles, added to much erudition perspicuity and ele-
gance of diction. Filippo Baldinucci (1624-1696), an-
other Florentine, compiled a very useful Vocabolario
toscano dell' arte del disegno ("Tuscan Dictionary of th?
Arts of Design") ; and in the Notisie just recorded he
arranged the material conveniently by centuries and de-
cades, furnished copious and exact information about the
artists he was discussing, and wrote with grace and rich-
ness of language. Finally, Francesco Negri, Francesco

250 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Carletti, and Pietro della Valle — the last-named a learned
geographer and daring explorer — left accounts of jour-
neys, worthy of study for many reasons.

We saw in the preceding chapter that Giovanni Bo-
tero admirably interpreted the political spirit of his
time — the close of the sixteenth century. It can be said
that this spirit remained unchanged in the seventeenth
century. Hence the Piedmontese politician continued
to have admirers and followers. Traiano Boccalini
(1556-1613), of Loreto, had a mind essentially critical
and inclined to satire, and he disdained everything like
baseness and hypocrisy; therefore he was in full and
open contrast to the age in which he lived; he was not
under restraint from any party, and had no prejudices as
to the examination of political institutions and laws ; and
he brought to his ingenious and singular work freedom
of judgment, keenness of analysis, and irony proceeding
from unaffected pessimism. The Ragguagli di Parnaso
("News from Parnassus"), in plot is not unlike the
pleasant rhymes of Caporali, and the many fantastic
travels and triumphs of the poets of the preceding cen-
turies. Boccalini imagines in it that virtuosi in arts, let-
ters, science, arms, and politics, of every time and na-
tion, present themselves at the same time before Apollo,
who reigns on Mount Parnassus; that there they dis-
cuss various questions, mostly of politics and literature,
and that the god finally gives his decisions. The official
gazetteer, by whom the reports of the discussions and de-
liberations on Parnassus are sent to the world, is Boc-
calini himself. These reports have the form and exterior
character of the Awisi, or "fly-sheets" — a rudimental
form of journalism — by means of which it was the cus-
tom to publish and circulate various kinds of information
throughout Italy. There are observations of every kind,
without close connection, sometimes subtle and judi-
cious, at other times insipid or paradoxical ; for the most

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 251

part they were satirical attacks on the political or liter-
ary prejudices of the time, and naturally had great if
not altogether deserved success, and numerous confutera
as well as imitators and translators.

The other works of Boccalini have similar excellencies
and defects — originality of invention, freedom of thought,
vivacity of wit, joined to carelessness of style, lack of
purity in language, and a certain tendency to paradox.
La pictra del paragone ("The Touchstone"), written out
of hatred for the Spaniards, is like an appendix to the
Ragguagli, essentially political in content, and was also
bitterly assailed. In the commentaries upon Tacitus,
his favorite author, Boccalini passes from one subject
to another, suggested by words or sentences in the Ro-
man history, and dilates in particular upon forms of gov-
ernment, among which he prefers a modified Republican
government, like that of Venice, and upon the duties of
princes. He gives a great number of examples from
modern history in support of his political theories, which
are an invaluable aid to a knowledge of his period.

The example of this writer, and the air of liberty in
some parts of Italy, during the war waged by Carlo
Emanuele against Spain, between 1614 and 1626, gave
impulse to a great number of political writings; among
them were two philippics against the Spaniards, vigorous
and eloquent, which went under the name of Tassoni.
What a difference between these papers, full of noble
and just sentiment, and the cold harangues, overflowing
with large words, artificial rhetoric, and extravagant
metaphors, of which the secento had so great an abun-
dance !

There was an exception — a splendid exception that
makes one wonder — in the Jesuit Paolo Segneri (1624-
1694), °f Nettuno, preacher and missionary, who has
left noted examples of sacred eloquence in the Qitaresi-
male ("Lenten Sermons"), in the Panegirici ("Eulogies"),

252 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

and in the Prediche dette net palazzo apostolico ("Sermons
Delivered in the Apostolic Palace"). If sometimes his
rhetoric gets the upper hand, so that he declaims or de-
nounces with interrogations, exclamations, emphatic re-
petitions, and legal tricks, still not a few felicitous
flights of oratory, not a few outbursts of unaffected
scorn, and unexpected opportune digressions, occur in
his sermons, which are justly valued, together with his
other devotional writings — among them the Manna dell'
amma ("Manna of the Soul"), the Incredulo senza scusa
("Doubter without Excuse"), and // Cristiano istruito
("The Christian Instructed").

But, while from the universal decadence of good taste
in the seventeenth century only a few historians and
political writers escape with Tassoni and two or three
lyric poets; while letters, regarded as a whole, seem
miserably fallen, science shone with splendid radiance,
and the final evolution of the Renaissance having been
carried to its height in art during the period that gave
to Italy Ariosto and Machiavelli, now fulfils itself in
the field of mathematics, physics, and natural science,
reaching its climax in Galileo Galilei. Thus our coun-
try, after educating Europe to the perception and love
of the beautiful, was able to cooperate in the work of
leading the way to strict scientific investigation of truth.

The first attempts among Italians to use the experi-
mental method were made by Leon Battista Albert! and
Leonardo da Vinci. After them, Bernardino Telesio
(15087-1588), of Cosenza, had contended for the study
and observation of nature, waging war on the principle
of authority and on narrow Aristotelianism, as Valla had
done before him; and, in defense of liberty of thought,
two brother rebels, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), of
Nola, and Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585?- 1619), of Tauri-
sano, had left their lives upon the funeral pyre. But
Bruno's pantheism and the ambiguous and indefinite

252 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

and in the Prediche dette nel palazzo apostolico ("Sermon*
Delivered in the Apostolic Palace"). If sometimes hi«
rhetoric gets the upper hand, so that he declaims or de-
nounces with interrogations, exclamations, emphat
petitions, and legal tricks, still not a few felicitous
flights of oratory, not a few outbursts of unaffected
scorn, and unexpected opportune digressions, occur in
his sermons, which are justly valued, together with his
other devotional writings — among them the Manna dcW
anima ("Manna of the Soul"), the Incredulo senza scusa
("Doubter without Excuse"), and // Cristiano is',
("The Christian Instructed").

But, while from the universal decadence of good taste
in the seventeenth century only a few historians and
political writers escape with Tassoni and two or three
Ivric poets; while letters, regarded as a whole, seem

GALILEO GALILEf* S?lcn

saving been

From a Painting by J. Sustff^a^-^ ,;.

and Machiavelli, now
the field of

reaching s our coun-

try, to the perception and love

of th s able to cooperate in the work of

leading the way to s c investigation of truth.

The first *- among Italians to use the experi-

mental method were made by Leon Battista Albert! and
Leonardo da Vinci. After them, Bernardino Telesio
(1508?- 1 588), of Cosenza, had contended for the study
and observation of nature, waging war on the principle
of authority and on narrow Aristotelianism, as Valla had
done before him; and, in defense of liberty of thought,
two brother rebels, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), of
Nola. and Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585?- 1619), of T;
•too, had left their lives upon the funeral pyre. Bat
o'» pantheism and the ambiguous aiwj indef

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 253

philosophy of Vanini preluded the reformed scientific
work of Galileo, quite different in its methods, only in
as far as they fed the spirit of independence of reason
from faith, in the consideration of natural phenomena.
Likewise Fra Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), of
Stilo in Calabria, was, rather than a philosopher, an in-
fatuated dreamer of political and social regeneration by
means of a design of his, by which, in his Cittd del Sole
("City of the Sun") he wandered at will through flowery
regions of Utopia, while in life he supported the bitter
reality of a twenty-nine years' imprisonment: In con-
sequence, he can be numbered among the precursors
of Galileo only by the rasionalita he followed as the one
norm in the construction of his fantastic edifice.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), of Pisa, first carried the
opposition to Aristotelianism from the field of theoretic
discussion into that of facts, and first applied to the
study of nature, with wonderful results, that experi-
mental method whose laws had been sought out and
explained in England by Francis Bacon, his contempo-
rary. Throughout his life Galileo consecrated all the
energies of his powerful and lucid intellect to the exact
sciences and to the observation of physical phenomena
by means of most accurate experiments; first at Pisa,
where he taught mathematics at the Studio from 1589
to 1592, then at Padua where he held the same chair
eighteen years. There is no one who does not know
what physics, and astronomy in particular, owe to him;
and the persecutions he suffered from the Holy Office,
to which his discoveries appeared dangerous for the
faith, are famous. Denounced by the Inquisition in 1615,
the great scientist hastened to Rome to exculpate him-
self; there, while Campanella from his cell at Naples
rose to his defense, in his Apologia pro Galilao, he was
solemnly "admonished" by Cardinal Bellarmino. For
some years he was free from serious annoyance. But

254 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

in 1632, for his Dialogo del massimi sistemi del mondo, he
was enjoined to return to Rome, and, although ill, he
went there in the beginning of the following year. There
he was examined and constrained to confess the falsity
of the Copernican system, which he knew to be scientif-
ically indisputable. They condemned him to be impris-
oned and to recite once every week the penitential
psalms ! Against such constraint, as contrary to human
dignity and to the inalienable rights of truth, "the popu-
lar conscience," says Favaro, "protested in the following
century," attributing to the supreme scientist the words
that he certainly did not pronounce : "But yet it moves."
However, Galileo was not shut up in an actual prison,
but in the palace of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at
Trinita de' Monti, whence he was soon allowed to re-
pair to Siena with the Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini,
and afterward to his villa of Arcetri. There he was al-
lowed to continue his scientific labors, though kept in-
sight by the Holy Office, and continually annoyed in
various ways. For some time he found consolation in
his lovely daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, who from the
convent of San Matteo in Arcetri wrote him letters of
which a considerable number have been preserved, ad-
mirable in their candor and affection. But she died in
1634; and, as a climax of misfortune, blindness came
to the bereaved father. Nevertheless, he continued his
investigations and studies. His fine Dialoghi delle nuove
scienze were written in 1638. At this time he obtained
leave to go to a house of his own at Florence, and there
he died, serenely, four years later.

Galileo was not only a great scientist ; he was a won-
derfully lucid and effective writer. His Saggiatore
("Assayer") is a gem of dialectic art, subtle, and, as far
as the scientific material permits, delightful. He had
studied Ariosto with great love and with a desire, as he
confesses, to make the style his own; and his prose

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 255

bears the evidence of it; it is no less graceful than cor-
rect and clear. To Tasso he was averse, and in certain
of his Considerazioni he exposes, almost with irritation,
the artifices and defects of that poet; nor could it be
otherwise, considering his conceptions of the methods and
aims of the art of expression. This little work of the
great scientist is perhaps the best produced by the
seventeenth century in the way of criticism. For the
Proginnasmi poetici ("Poetic Pro-gymnastics") of Bene-
detto Fioretti (Udeno Nisiely), of Mercatale (1579-
1642), is a poor thing, a confused medley of observa-
tions concerning Greek, Latin, and Italian poets; and
only some gleam of real acumen shines here and there
in the erudite writings of Niccola Villani, a curious fig-
ure of a litcrato, who at the same time cultivated humo-
rous poetry and wrote its history learnedly, defended
Marino, and analyzed two tragedies of the Renaissance,
wrote not inelegant poetry in Latin, and censured the
Gerusalemme, hoping perhaps to surpass it with his Fio-
renza difesa ("Florence Defended"). As to Celso Citta-
dine, of Siena, who was long regarded as leading the
way to the history of the grammar of the Romance lan-
guages, it is now established that, in the Origini delta
volgar toscana favella (1604), he did no more than put
together badly some unpublished grammatical writings
of Tolomei.

From the school of Galileo came some of the best
writers on scientific subjects that Italy can boast: Be-
nedetto Castelli, of Brescia, Bonaventura Cavalieri, of
Milan, Evangelista Torricelli of Faenza, Vincenzo Vi-
viani, of Florence. And the way that he marked out
was followed in the next age by Lorenzo Magalotti
(1637-1712), born in Rome of a Florentine family, who
was secretary of the Academy of the Cimento, and wrote
clear and exact accounts of its labors in the Saggi di
naturali esperiense. Besides by this most excellent work,

256 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

he is particularly known by the Lettere Familiari, iri
which he combats atheism, and by fifteen Platonic can-
zoni, entitled La donna immaginaria ("The Imaginary
Lady"). Magalotti, in his encyclopedic tendencies, in
the great variety of his writings, in his love of travel,
in his knowledge of foreign languages, and in the breadth
of his criterions of style, was a forerunner of the eight-
eenth century

The literature of the eighteenth century is not dis-
tinct in its first decades from that of which we have
spoken heretofore. Between the literature of the seven-
teenth century and that of the eighteenth, there is no
line of demarcation, no break of continuity. It is usually
said that the celebrated academy which originated in
the last decade of the seventeenth century, with the
name of "Arcadia," from the conversazioni held by Chris-
tina of Sweden in the salon she established in Rome
after her abdication, represented the reaction against the
so-called secentism, ("Seventeenth-centuryism"). This is
true. But this it may be observed did not prevent its
being at the same time a recrudescence, or, if the ex-
pression is preferred, a transformation of the "prezio-
sita" ("pr/cieuses"). Chivalry is quite another thing from
affectation; the latter, as we know, had been grafted
upon the former in our poetry by Marino and his fol-
lowers, from the desire for novelty. What did the Ar-
cadia do? It opposed the bombast and the abuse, or
the ill use, of metaphoric speech — the principal charac-
teristic of the seventeenth century, where was sought in
the effeminacy of the Anacreontic style, and in the
feebleness of the idyllic, the form of poetry best adapted
to a society of formal priests and of gallants in perukes.
It turned to approach, or rather it approached still more
nearly than in the past, the bucolic sentiment, and was,
perhaps not a revival, but a continuation, of the national
tradition. For this sentiment, connatural, as it were, to

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 257

our race, had come from the Sicilian Theocritus and from
the Mantuan Virgil, down through the Tuscan Boccaccio
and the Neapolitan Sannazzaro, celebrating its greatest
triumphs under our skies and in face of our seas.

In doing this the Arcadia tuned its shepherd's pipe
in unison with the lyres of every part of Europe, signal-
ly of France. For, carried from Italy among the nations
where Sannazzaro, Tasso, and Guarini were admired and
imitated, pastoral poetry was in favor in all those liter-
atures in the eighteenth century. Further, it banished
from poetry by this means the turgid, the whimsical,
the flashy. Hence the fourteen founders of the grand
new academy, which soon had its laws, given by Gra-
vini, and its established seat — the Bosco Parrasio, upon
the Janiculum — could boast of having given to our liter-
ature a valid means for "exterminating bad taste and
providing against its resurrection." None the less, pas-
toral simplicity soon degenerated — nor could it be other-
wise— into insipid sweetness ; and the innumerable shep-
herds, the endless shepherdesses, versifying in the colo-
nies of the Arcadia from one end of Italy to the other,
gave us a poesy all milk and honey. Thus, though the
sonorous emptiness was gone, the fine-spun and far-
fetched conceits of thought and form remained. There
were two graceful Arcadians of great renown in their
time: Carlo Maria Maggi (1630-1699), of Milan, a volu-
minous but feeble writer of lyrics, songs and dramatic
compositions; and Francesco De Lemene (1634-1704),
of Lodi, noted especially for his religious poetry. Giam-
battista Zappi (1667-1719), of Imola, one of the foun-
ders of the successful academy, is ornate and ungrace-
ful; with the exception of sonnets upon Judith, upon
Michelangelo's Moses and upon Lucretia, his verses
seem inferior even to those of his wife, Faustina Ma-
ratti, whose poetry was inspired by the dolorous events
of her life.
17

258 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

For the rest, the erotic affectations and the frivolous
insipidities of the salon and the academy were not pe-
culiar to Italy at this period. They reflected conditions
common to the other nations as well. Metastasio, Rolli
and Frugoni were among us what Dorat, Bernard, and
a thousand others were in France; and, in Germany,
Frederic Hagedorn and the school of German Anacre-
ontic poets. From Metastasio we have cansonette exqui-
sitely melodious and spontaneous which attained to
great popularity. Paolo Rolli (1687-1765), a Roman,
cultivated largely the tender and gallant canzonetta, and
was called the leader of this class of poetry. Carlo
Innocenzo Frugoni (1692-1768), a patrician of Genoa,
sought to unite the classic seriousness to the facile flow
proper to lyric poetry, using a style sonorous, pompous
and redundant. For this he had the credit of having
made an innovation on the manner of the Arcadian
Academy — to which he belonged under the name Co-
mante Egenetico — while he did no more than furnish
the poetry of his day with fine fashions and embellish-
ments, instead of pouring into it the new blood it so
much needed. His numerous poems, various in subject
and meter, are in truth poor as to their content. "Para-
sitic Anacreon of Farnesian bacon, Horace of Bourbon
chocolate," as Carducci calls him, Frugoni improvised
rhymes in gratitude for a basket of mushrooms or a
demijohn of wine, to borrow Spanish tobacco, or to in-
vite himself to dinner. He was a brother of the Somas-
can order; then, having been absolved from his vows,
he was a priest, and then for a long time a courtier in
Parma with the Farnese and the Bourbons ; and he gives
us a picture complete and characteristic of the Italian
clergy of the Settecento: indefatigable squires of dames
and no less indefatigable fabricators of cansonette, to be
sung to the cymbals, and of chamber pastorals. "Father
incorrupt of corrupt sons," Vincenzo Monti thought him;

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 25$

but the ampollc e le parole ("inflated and wordy expres-
sions") of his followers were not lacking in him. How-
ever, blank verse skilfully treated and some superficial
characteristics of his art make him a precursor not to
be passed over of the poet of the Bassvilliana.

As the work of the Arcadian Academy was the repre-
sentative of the lyric poetry of this part of the eighteenth
century, so Metastasio's musical drama was the repre-
sentative of its stage literature.

Pietro Trapassi, who took the Greek name Metastasio
(1698-1782), son of a poor family in Rome, was learning
a trade when Gianvincenzo Gravina heard him improvis-
ing songs, and took him to his own home, educated
him, and when he died left him his property. After he
had lost his protector, the young man devoted himself
to poetry and at the same time to a life of enjoyment;
then, having speedily wasted his inheritance, he was
obliged to repair to Naples and enter the office of an
advocate. But meantime he had written some pieces
for the theater and had them acted; this led to an ac-
quaintance with a celebrated cantatrice, Marianna Benti
Bulgarelli, called la Romanina, who took a liking to him,
protected and aided him. For her he wrote Didone Ab-
bandonata ("Forsaken Dido"), which rendered him fa-
mous. He went with her to Venice and then to Rome,
writing other lyrical dramas not less successful. In
1729 he had the honor of an invitation to Vienna as im-
perial poet. There he found favor with the Countess
Marianna d'Althann, at first his patroness, afterward, it
is said, his wife. His life thereafter was calm and com-
fortable; he busied himself with writings for which he
was well paid — musical dramas, oratorios, serenades and
canzonettc for the use of the court. His placid nature,
averse to violent commotions, was reflected in these mu-
sic-dramas; for, although there are not wanting pas-
sages of real eloquence in them, especially in the Themis-

260 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

took, in the Clemenza di Tito, and in the Attilio Regolo,
Metastasio never rises in them to the sublime, to the trag-
ic, to vehement and grand pathos; rather he seeks the
beautiful by exquisite gentleness; he prefers the sigh
of sadness to the sob of despair, the thrill of love to
the quivering of anger. The explanation of the im-
mense popularity of Metastasio's work, aside from its
perfect consonance with the artistic ideal of the age, con-
sists in the marvelous fluidity and the incomparable har-
mony of the verse. Nothing more akin to itself can
music ask from the art of words.

The musical drama rose with Metastasio to the great-
est height of art of which it was naturally capable. Lo-
renzo da Ponte and Casti, who contended for the succes-
sion in the office of imperial poet, Ranieri de' Calsabigi,
who followed his lead in the Orfco, set to music by
Gliick, Count Carlo Gastone della Torre di Rezzonico
(1742-1796), of Como, who found time to imitate him,
while he cultivated scientific poetry with diligence, re-
mained far inferior to the master of this dramatic form.

Together with the musical drama the regular comedy
continued to have cultivators in the first half of the
eighteenth century, but these were only mediocre. Giro-
lamo Gigli (1660-1722), a Sienese of eccentric genius,
was a scholar and acute critic, defender of the speech
of his city in a Vocabolario Cateriniano ("Dictionary of St.
Catherine"), which roused against him the wrath of the
Florentine Academy, the object of his scorn. In the
Don Pilone, ovvero il bacchettone falso ("Don Pilo: or, the
False Devotee"), he puts upon the stage a hypocrite
vividly representing the false pietism of Tuscany under
Cosimo III. But the comedy is only a free version of
Moliere's Tartufe with curious interpolations. In the
Sorellina di Don Pilone ("The Little Sister of Don Pilo"),
in which he followed out the design of the former, the
Abounding personal satire has no savor for us. Jacopo

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 261

Nelli (i673?-i767), another Sienese, approached too near
to the drama a soggetto, the comedy of masks, in his
numerous comedies, which are involved in their action
and have slight originality.

Giambattista Fagiuoli (1660-1742), a Florentine, was
a favorite of Cardinal Francesco Maria de' Medici, and
took delight in festive society; academies vied with one
another to secure him, for in that talkative century,
academies swarmed from one end of the peninsula to
the other. Together with a great number of capitoli
and other "pleasant rhymes," whose spontaneous hu-
mor compensates for the futile and the slovenly pas-
sages, he left a score of comedies, valuable for the stu-
dent of the plebeian or peasant language of Tuscany in
the eighteenth century, but insipid in their themes and
conventional in their characters. The "comedy of the
arts" continued to dominate the stage, and new Scenarii
were written for it even by literati.

The writers of tragedy at this time were strongly in-
fluenced by French literature, to which Corneille and
Racine had given in the seventeenth century a tragic
drama nobly and classically dignified, and not without a
touch of gallantry. Pier Jacopo Martelli (1665-1727),
of Bologna, wrote tragedies formed upon those, even in
the meter; from him the Alexandrine verse took its Ital-
ian name, still retained, of martelliano. However, in some
of his dramas he used the hendecasyllable unrhymed,
among others the Femia, which is remembered to-day
only for its versification. The imitation of the French
drama was opposed by Gravina, as poor a dramatist as
he was a good critic, and Domenico Lazzarini (1668-
I73I)» °f Macerata, professor of Latin and Greek litera-
tures at the studio of Padua. In the Ulisse il giovane
("The Young Ulysses"), Lazzarini designed to return
to the Greeks, attempting their gravity of form and dig-
nity of characters, and he aimed above all to excite emo-

262 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tion or to terrify. Contemporaneously, and upon the
lines of the same models, Scipione Maffei (1675-1755),
a Veronese scholar and poet, recalled tragedy to the ob-
servance of the rules it had followed two centuries
earlier, with his successful Merope, acted at Modena in
1713. This drama, in unrhymed hendecasyllables, with
simple plot, without choruses, without prologue, without
confusion, is perhaps the best produced in Italy before
Alfieri, for, despite certain defects, it interests and
moves. Finally, Antonio Conti (1677-1749), a Paduan,
a man of varied activity, highly versed in the sciences
and in ancient and modern literature, profited in the
composition of his tragedies by the wide acquaintance
with literature acquired during a long sojourn in France
and in England and by the literary friendships contracted
in those countries. He knew the dramas of Shakespeare
and knew how to make his knowledge of use in his own
work; in his choice of form he had in view the classics
of the French in their age of gold. The civic and moral
plots he designed were only imperfectly carried out.

The literary character of this period, extending from
the foundation of the Arcadian Academy in 1690 to the
middle of the eighteenth century, does not differ sub-
stantially from that of the preceding period. The de-
cadence continued, but with some signs of revival.

In science, the school of Galileo was continued by
ardent disciples. The contrast between its abounding
vigor and the miserable condition of letters is not less
marked than in the preceding century. Yet, on the
one hand, scientific writings lose the charm of elegant
and correct style, because the thought is the only mat-
ter of concern; on the other hand, the scientific spirit
was diffused through certain kinds of literature, as works
of scholarship, critical history, and ethical studies. Thus
science and literature drew together and were allied with
many reciprocal concessions. From this union the Ian-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 263

guage came out miserably barbarized, because our wri-
ters had their eyes constantly on the French, who were
skilful promoters of the new doctrines.

Therefore no artistic value belongs to the work of
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), a Neapolitan, and one
of the most powerful and profound intellects of Italy in
speculative thought. In 1725 he published La Scienza
nuova, that is, the "Principles of a New Science concern-
ing the Nature of Nations by Means of which Are Dis-
covered Other Principles of Natural Law among Na-
tions." Notwithstanding its lack of purely literary value,
this work, which initiated the "new science," the philos-
ophy of history, has a place in literary annals. It is
the fruit of daily reflection ; for Vico prepared for it slow-
ly during nine years passed in the quiet of Cilento, where
he was tutor to the nephews of the Bishop of Ischia,
whence he passed in 1697 to the chair of rhetoric in
the University of Naples. Prepared by close studies in
letters, philosophy, and jurisprudence, after partially
developing his theory in various Latin writings, he
sought, in La Scicnza nuova, the origin of all science by
the light of philology, and with conceptions and intui-
tions revealing the highest genius, he arrived by this
untried path at a history of human thought, which, if
it has since lost some of its value, was for those times
wonderful. His theory of corsi e ricorsi ("flux and re-
flux," or "ebb and flow"), concerning the various stages
passed through by nations, is no longer accepted; but
his observations on the laws of the development of nat-
ional civilizations are acute and judicious. He was the
first to advance the theory, largely developed and dis-
cussed by philologists of the present day, that Homer
may have been, not an actual person, but "an idea or a
heroic character of men of Greece in as far as they nar-
rated or sang their histories."

Beside Vico, who may be called the founder of that

264 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

historical criticism that is allied to philosophy and de-
pends upon it, should be placed Lodovico Antonio Mura-
tori (1672-1750), of Vignola, near Modena, inaugurator
of the historic criticism guided by light from the work of
the antiquary and the diplomat. Both were great; both
pursued the inductive method, which had given new life
to science. Muratori, a good priest and an industrious
librarian, left works of varied erudition, among them
the Rerum italicarum Scriptores ("Writers of Italian His-
tory"), art immense and valuable collection, in twenty-
eight great volumes, of chronicles and other writings
covering Italian history for about a thousand years —
from the invasion of the barbarians to the sixteenth cen-
tury compiled with the cooperation of others, and pub-
lished in Milan, from 1723-1738. To this .work he added
Antiquitates italics Medii JEvi ("Italian Antiquities of the
Middle Ages"), learned and acute dissertations describ-
ing the conditions in our peninsula in mediaeval times;
and the Annali d'ltalia, wherein he sets forth the history
of the country from the beginning of the modern era to
1749. Thus he filled admirably the office of historian
in three departments: as a collector of sources, as an
illustrator of those sources, and as a narrator of events.

Besides Vico and Muratori there were about the same
time other* famous critics and scholars in this class of
studies who are worthy of note in literary history. At
the end of the seventeenth century, a Veronese, Fran-
cesco Bianchini, proposed to illustrate universal history
from the creation of the world to his own age in an
Istoria universale provata con momimenti e figurata con sim-
boli degli antichi ("Universal History Confirmed by Monu-
ments and Illustrated by the Symbols of the Ancients"),
interpreting ancient monuments with the rigor of the
critical method; but he published only the first volume,
ending with the destruction of the Assyrian Empire.

Giovan Maria Crescimbeni (1663-1728), of Macerata,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 265

for thirty-eight years custodian-general of the Arcadia,
with his Storia dclla volgar pocsia ("History of Poetry
in the Vernacular"), and better, with the "Commen-
taries" on that history, and Count Giammaria Mazzu-
chelli (1707-1765), of Brescia, with his dictionary of the
writers of Italy, full of information, but not printed be-
yond the letter B, brought, to the knowledge of our liter-
ary history a large contribution of information — not al-
ways scrupulously verified— especially that by the for-
mer. A mine of information, sometimes recondite, on
the same subject is furnished by the confused Storia e
ragione d'ogni poesia ("History and Themes of Poetry")
by Francesco Saverio Quadrio, of Valtellino, published
in several editions between 1736 and 1752.

Lastly, the Venetian Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750), pred-
ecessor of Metastasio as imperial poet at Vienna, was
at the same time author of musical dramas of merit and
a scholar of singular insight and modernity of criteria,
fortunate in his researches for bibliographic rarities,
(cimelii), as he was a famous collector of medals; in-
spired with ardent love and desire for truth. His corre-
spondence with the most learned scholars of his time, his
annotations to the Biblioteca dell' eloqucnza italiana, of
Mons. Giusto Fontanini, his Dissertasioni vossiane — that
is, additions and corrections to the De historicis latinis
of Voss — are works that even at this day students of
literary history have constantly at hand. To Zeno's in-
dustry we owe also the Giornalc dei lettcrati d'ltalia
("Journal of the Literati of Italy"), one of the most
important periodicals of the eighteenth century. In that
century political and literary journals had wide circula-
tion, with tendencies more or less encyclopaedic ; the dis-
semination of knowledge was aided as well by the peri-
odical collections of pamphlets or articles, like the fam-
ous ones of Father Calogera and Father Zaccaria.

266 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

CHAPTER IX
THE REVIVAL

N the literature of the first fifty years of the eight-
eenth century, it is not difficult to find, even
aside from scientific works, amid the stifling re-
pression in which it stagnates, signs forecasting
a coming salutary upheaval. The Arcadia was not al-
together affected and unnatural. In later times there
was some good in it; for, by dint of observing nature
and reality, even through the somewhat tarnished crys-
tal of conventional bucolic sentiment, some of the count-
less Arcadian flock succeeded in forcing the barriers set
against them and going to wander through the serene
regions of art, inspired by nature herself, without prej-
udice of the school. Moreover, the Academy had num-
bered among its members from the beginning men of
ability, like the jurisconsult Gianvincenzo Gravina
(1664-1718), of Roggiano in Calabria, who in two books,
Delia ragion poetica, and in one other, Delia tragedia, proves
himself a learned and judicious critic. Nor was there
ever lacking some one who left the shade of the "Bosco
Parrasio" to breathe the invigorating air of the north.
The desire to look beyond the confines of the peninsula,
to find inspiration in the thought and sentiment of the
French and the English, arose in Italy at the end of the
seventeenth century.

But as the next century advanced, this desire was in-
tensified beyond measure. It was made an object to
bring the national culture into close resemblance to the
foreign ; the old traditions of the country were cast aside
that ultramontane examples might be followed; the in-
tellectual horizon was broadened — to use one of those

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 267

metaphors of scientific nature in which they delighted
in that age. Various were the tastes, and common was
the tendency to confuse diverse productions of the human
mind. "Oriental, Northern, Latin, French, German,"
were admired and imitated throughout the peninsula, as
Ippolito Pindemonte affirmed, in discussing Quale sia
presentemcnte il gusto dette belle kttere in Italia ("The
Present Taste in Belles-Lettres in Italy"). Voltaire,
playing the pope on the other side of the Alps, had his
devotees, and not a few, among us. To us came the
echo of the sayings of Fontenelle, "oracle of science";
and from the lines of the celebrated English poet, Alex-
ander Pope, came, as it were, a reflection of the "great
sun" of science himself — Isaac Newton.

Paris and London vied with each other in furnish-
ing not only fashions but ideas to the new cosmopolitan
and eclectic Italy. Our writers also preferred the work
of French and English authors. Translations of their
poets and their prose writers, often merely disguised in
Italian, circulated through the hands of the people. Even
our most illustrious literati joined in the modest work of
turning them into our idiom. The Paduan, Melchiorre
Cesarotti (1730-1808), a priest, and a professor, first in
the Seminary, afterward of Greek and Hebrew in the
Athenaeum of his own city, while tutor in the house of
the Grimani in Venice, learned from an Englishman
of the songs in prose which the Scotchman, James Mac-
pherson, had published as the work of Ossian, an ancient
Caledonian bard. He was enamored of the gloomy, fan-
tastic, impetuous poetry; and he translated some of the
songs, a part in 1763 and others in 1772, in sonorous
and well constructed blank verse, which gave him wide
and lasting renown and seemed "an excellent model,"
even to Alfieri. Besides Ossian, Cesarotti rendered into
Italian some of Voltaire's tragedies and Gray's famous
Elegy. His fellow-citizen, Antonio Conti, who had

268 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

spent a long time in France and England, translated the
"Heloise to Abelard" and "The Rape of the Lock" from
Pope, whose poetry he recommended as a model to the
Italians; also Racine's Atalie. Before this, Rolli, who
had spent more than thirty years in England up to 1747,
had given an Italian dress to Racine's Atalie and his
Esther, and to Milton's Paradise Lost.

Other writers not less renowned were imitators, not
in lyrics alone, but also in long poems. Thus the Lutrin
("Lecturn") of Boileau is recalled to us by the Raccolte
("Collections") of the Mantuan Saverio Bettinelli (1718-
1808), a long-lived Jesuit, who taught successively at
Brescia, Bologna, Venice, and Parma, and traveled
through Europe as tutor to the sons of Prince Hohen-
lohe. He was in Paris, visited King Stanislaus in Lo-
rena, and was sent by that prince to Voltaire, with whom
he formed a friendship. His work shows plainly the in-
fluence of the spirit and forms prevailing at that time
in the literature of Europe, particularly in that of
France. His best work, the Risorgimento d'ltalia negli
studii, nelle arti e nei costumi dopo il mille ("Resurrection
of Italy in Learning, in Arts, and in Manners after the
Year 1000"), is a study of a vast period in the life of
Italy, giving its mutations and advances in thought and
customs, upon the lines of the historic labors of Vol-
taire. From the same influence proceeded his revolt
against traditions and opinions sanctioned by universal
consent. In the Letter e died di Virgilio agli Arcadi ("Ten
Letters from Virgil to the Arcadians"), followed, for
their defense, by the Lettere Ingksi ("English Letters"),
he abuses Dante and his admirers and imitators, imagin-
ing that Virgil, from Elysium, where the ancient poets
are gathered, relates their discussions by letter to the
Arcadian Academy. In the Lettere Ingksi he affirms,
through the mouth of an Englishman, that the Italians
have no literature in their own language, by reason of

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 269

their pedantry, of academic tradition, of the lack of a
center, or "point of union," as Paris is to France and
London to England. It is evident that in treating of
Italian affairs he had foreign conditions constantly in
mind.

Bettinelli, a singular mingling, as he has been de-
scribed, "of Jesuit and Voltairean, of scholar and clerical
gallant," known everywhere by the noise and discussions
raised by his Virgilian letters, was an authority with his
contemporaries, and in the latter years of his long life
all revered him as the Nestor of Italian literature. Al-
garotti, likewise, enjoyed great esteem. His poems in
blank verse were published by Bettinelli with his own
and those of Frugoni, being presented as "of three ex-
cellent authors," and as perfect models of poesy, to-
gether with the letters themselves. Both, therefore, con-
tributed not a little to diffuse among Italians the knowl-
edge and the love of foreign things.

Francesco Algarotti was born at Venice in 1712 and
died at Pisa in 1764; he traveled and lived a long time
in France, in England, in Germany and in Russia. He
enjoyed the favor of Frederick the Great, who honored
him with the title of count; he was in amicable rela-
tions with Voltaire and knew other celebrities and sci-
entists; and in his works he, like Bettinelli, interpreted
— somewhat frivolously, but with ease and grace — the
tastes and tendencies predominating in European litera-
ture. His Ncu'tonianismo per le dame ("Newtonism for
Ladies"), a highly-prized work, was translated into va-
rious languages. He softened the asperities of science
in numerous other writings upon the fine arts, literature,
music, military art, and ancient and modern history, ex-
hibiting always variety, if not profundity, in his teach-
ings. It is to be regretted that he made the reading
of his works fatiguing by his lack of purity of language.
But his familiarity with French, in which he wrote, not

270 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

without elegance, and the universality of his literary
culture, occasioned in him, as in so many others, the
corruption of his own language.

For in the eighteenth century a thick veneer of French
spread itself over our idiom, ill-omened and fatal. There
was among us that respect for the French that there had
been in France in the sixteenth century for the Italian;
thought and writing, like clothes, were in the fashion of
Paris. The barriers placed by nature between us and
our neighbors across the Alps seemed to be taken away,
such commerce of books there was, and interchange of
ideas. The learned not only carried on serious conversa-
tions, but jested in the language of Voltaire. The abate,
Ferdinando Galiani (1728-1787), of Chieti, author of a
classic treatise, Delia moneta ("Of Money"), and other
writings on various subjects, was joint author with an-
other abate, Giambattista Lorenzi, of the Socrate im-
magmario, a masterpiece of the Neapolitan opera buffa,
which was acted in 1775, with music by Paisiello.
.Though the authorship is ascribed to the two mentioned,
it is probable that the subject, plot, and Aristophanesque
wit are due to Galiani. In the ten years he lived in
Paris as secretary of the embassy from the King of
Naples, he shone brilliantly, with his wit and fine cul-
ture, in the elegant salons of the most illustrious ladies
of France; he was a friend of Diderot, of D'Alembert,
^and of other literati. He also took a conspicuous place
,in the history of French literature by his copious cor-
'respondence in that language, by his dialogue Sur ks
femntes and his Dialogues sur le commerce des bles
("grains"), and others.

At Milan the editors of the journal // caffe (1764-66),
able and industrious young men, forming a curious so-
ciety, L'Accademia dtf Pugni, and joined in friendship by
a common desire for glory, if not by love "for the civic
and social welfare," were subservient to the ultramon-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 271

tane taste, declaring explicitly that they renounced the
purism of the grammar and language of Italy. In Bo-
logna, in 1761, a journal in French was issued. And
upon the stage French tragedies in Italian versions met
with the favor of the public; the plays of Destouches
were triumphant; fortune smiled on the pikes larmoy-
antes even on this side of the Alps, where in numerous
drammi lagrimevoli ("tearful dramas") "sensibility," dear
to the eighteenth century, melted into tears. Under the
auspices of Martelli, the monotonous Alexandrine had
already received the right of citizenship among our dra-
matic meters.

English literature was also admired and imitated,
though in less degree; and Pope, Thomson and Young
were much in favor. "The Rape of the Lock" was large-
ly circulated in Italy. Lorenzo Pignotti (1739-1812), of
Figline, physician and professor of physics at the Uni-
versity of Pisa, a great favorite of the Grand Duke Fer-
dinand III, and a popular author of stories, novels, and
a History of Tuscany, imitated that poem in La treccia
donata ("The Gift of the Tress"). To Pignotti we owe
also two short poems: L'ombra di Pope and La tomba di
Shakespeare, showing his familiarity with British poets.
Not less popular than "The Rape of the Lock" were
Thomson's "Seasons" and Young's "Night Thoughts."
The last-named, together with Gray's "Elegy," inspired
in Italy a taste for melancholy and sepulchral poetry,
which later had its most splendid artistic manifestation
in the Sepolcri of Ugo Foscolo.

It was a natural result of the French and English
influence so prevalent in Italy, that there should be a
general desire for knowledge of the culture and letters
of other nations. Much was done to satisfy this desire —
that is, to enlarge the common stock of information and
ideas by the journeys taken throughout Europe by men
like Galiani and Algarotti, and like Antonio Cocchi, a

272 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

skilful scientist and an able writer on literary subjects;
also Paolo Frisi, an authority in every branch of mathe-
matics, to whom we owe a fine eulogy on Galileo.

German literature as well, though despised by the
majority, had its connoisseurs and admirers. For if the
barbarous Teutonic language was denounced and, as it
were, put under the ban by the authority of Algarotti
and Bettinelli, who shuddered "at the hissing voices of
the ferocious Vandals," on the other hand, Giambattista
Corniani, of Brescia, author of a literary history of Italy
notable for its time, published in 1774 a Saggio sopra
la ktteratura alemanna ("Essay on German Literature") ;
Bernardo Maria Calura, has left us some translations
from the German, together with some from Young, his
idol, and from others; Aurelio de* Giorgi Bertola (1753-
1798), of Rimini, a passionate admirer of the Germans,
gave to Italy a history and an anthology of German liter-
ature in the Idea della poesia alemanna, which he enlarged
and revised five years later, with the title Idea della bella
ktteratura alemanna.

Bertola, who was the incarnation of this tendency to
make a treasure of exotic sciences and arts, attached
his own name as versifier only to fables, love-songs and
rhymes of the fields and of the sea. His poems are of
the best that the Arcadian manner could produce in its
last stage, rejuvenated by imitations of the more famous
among the foreigners who had followed, or were follow-
ing, lines in art in harmony with it.

However, the tender and gallant abate of Rimini, com-
pared with his predecessors and contemporaries, pro-
duced something new. He spoke, with remarkable
modernity of expression, of the feeling of nature; he
tried to understand the intimate voice, that is to say,
the soul of things; he tried to represent tones and tints
of color that seemed to him unobserved in the arts of
design anq of words. This is shown in his poetry, and

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 287

reverting to classic tradition, declining but not wholly
extinct in our drama. Cesarotte thought that Goldoni
might have approached more nearly to Moliere if he had
had as much learning as natural ability, if he had written
a little more correctly, if his ridicule had been at times
more delicate, if his circumstances had permitted him
to write a smaller umber of comedies and to elaborate
them more. But even as it is, notwithstanding his super-
ficial treatment of some psychologic problems, and his
want of variety and clearness in expression, Goldoni is
the greatest of Italian writers of comedy, and certainly
one of the most noteworthy of European dramatists, be-
cause of his natural intuition of the needs of the stage,
his love for the study and observation of reality, his
lively picturing of the Venetian life of his time, his fer-
tility in amusing inventions, and finally because of the
spirited mirthfulness of the dialogue, which is especially
good in the comedies in vernacular, where he is not
placed at a disadvantage by the weak, faded, and im-
pure language of eighteenth-century writers. Hence the
perennial freshness of his comedies, whose artistic value
is attested by the fact that La locandiera di spirito ("The
Witty Landlady"), La serva amorosa ("The Amorous
Servant-Maid"), // burbero benefico ("The Beneficent
Bear"), // ventaglio ("The Fan"), are still acted on our
stage, as well as some of the comedies in dialect, giving
us relief with their healthy joviality from the dreary
nebulosity of the new Scandinavian and the German
drama.

Although Goldoni had no real influence in giving a
new direction to Italian literature, he naturally did not
lack imitators of mediocre ability, as the Marquis Fran-
cesco Albergati Capacelli (1728-1804), of Bologna, a gen-
tleman fond of gay living and of the stage, who wrote
comedies to be recited at his villa, which are good as
pictures of the manners of his time ; the Paduan Antonio

288 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Sografi (1759-1818), more happy where he followed Gol-
doni's manner than in his attempts at historic drama;
and Camillo Federici, whose real name was Giambattista
Liassolo or Viassolo (1749-1802), of Garessio, near Mon-
dovi, who wrote many comedies using final recognitions
and other stage artifices, and gaining tremendous ap-
plause. But, throughout the century, other influences,
coming from foreign sources operated contemporaneous-
ly upon our drama. Some writers, among them Federici,
were inspired by the sentimental, melancholy dramas of
the German August Kotzebue. Albergati and Gaspare
Gozzi translated French comedies and tragedies. Goz-
zi's versions are, in truth, very poor, — the tragedy nerve-
less, the comedy without wit or vivacity; nor can any-
thing better be said for his stage compositions of the
class called at that time tragi-comedies ; the versification
is careless, the action slow. But he wrote for the stago
against his will, driven by necessity to "put his soul in,
the balances and sell his brain to the drama," as he wrote
in his Sermoni; and his name, which, after the three great
ones of which we have just spoken, is most to be re-
membered, among the many that have come down to us
from the eighteenth century, is attached to a very dif-
ferent class of literature.

Gaspare Gozzi (1713-1786) a Venetian of a noble but
decayed family, was married at the age of twenty-five
to Luisa Bergalli, called in Arcadia Irminda Partenide.
Inept at managing her household, and infatuated with
verse, she wasted his patrimony, and then, in 1758, un-
dertook the management of the theater San Angelo, in
which she failed, reducing herself, her husband, and their
five children to the miseries of penury. He was there-
fore obliged to take up the uncongenial work of trans-
lating and compiling for booksellers. In 1760 he asked
of Marco Foscarini — a learned patrician, author of a
valued history of Venetian literature, who had under-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 289

taken to protect him — the vacant professorship of Greek
and Latin literature at the University of Padua. Un-
fortunately, he did not know Greek well enough, and
the chair was given to a rhetorician, Clemente Sibiliato.
But two years later he obtained a permanent office, the
censorship of printing, to which other responsibilities
were afterward added, so that he could restore to some
extent the fortunes of his family. But his health was
enfeebled, and while at Padua in 1777, he threw him-
self, in an access of fever, out of a window into a canal
below. Having been rescued, he received affectionate
care from the noble Caterina Dolfin Tron and afterward
from his second wife. He died nine years later.

Gozzi was above all a critic, discerning, versed in
classic literature, and a student of the modern, with the
masterpieces of which he was familiar either in the orig-
inal or in translations; he was endowed with fine taste
and with a mind sensitive to the most varied and con-
trasted manifestations of the beautiful. In the so-called
Defense of Dante, that is, the Gindizio dcgli aniichi pocti
sopra la modcrna ccnsura di Dante attribuita ingiustamente a
Virgilio ("Judgment of the Ancient poets on the Modern
Criticism of Dante unjustly Attributed to Virgil") he con-
futed with subtlety, with fulness of argument and rigor
of logic, the "Virgilian Letters" of Bettinelli. Doubtless
this work aided not a little in the revival of the study of
Dante which is among the glories of this period of re-
awakening in thought and art.

In L'Osseri'atorc ("The Observer"), his principal work
(176 1 -'2), Gozzi treats in elegant style, and with finely-
shaded language, a wide variety of subjects — especially
moral, philosophical, and literary — in the forms of dia-
logues, discussions, sketches, novels, letters, allegories.
In his journalistic chronicle of events in Venice, he ap-
proaches the vivacity of Sacchetti; in his fables and
dialogues the simplicity of the Greeks; in a periodical

19

290 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

he followed the model of Addison's Spectator, which he
knew in a French translation. Among his numerous
other writings should be especially recorded, besides the
Lettcre diverse, II mondo morale ("The Moral World"), a
sort of allegoric romance (1760) ; the Gazzetta Veneta
(1760-1), another periodical from which a number of
tales were extracted after the author's death, and, above
all, the Sermoni, in blank verse finely elaborated, where-
in the author shows himself an exquisite stylist, no less
than an urbanely acute moralist.

Another critical writer of the same time, as much less
elegant as he was more robust and singular, was a Pied-
montese who had more than one moral and literary trait
in common with the dramatist of Asti (Alfieri) ; he too
was restless, impetuous, sincere, enamored of Italy.

Giuseppe Baretti, born April 24, 1719, in Turin, of a
family originally from Rivalta Bormida in Monferrato, led
a life tumultuous even for one of his indocile and indepen-
dent character. On account of family quarrels he left his
father's house in 1735, and went to an uncle at Guas-
talla, where he was generously directed in his studies
by Carlo Cantoni, a humorist and story-writer of some
ability. From there he went to Venice, thence to Milan ;
there he frequented the literary gatherings of Casa Im-
bonati, read at the reestablished Academy of the Tras-
formati his poetic compositions, some of which he pub-
lished, and made translations in blank verse — quite medi-
ocre, in truth— of Ovid's Amores and Remedia Amoris.

In the following years he was at Cuneo, Turin, and
again at Venice. In 1751 he went to London, where
he remained till 1760, teaching Italian and attending to
various publications. After traversing Portugal, Spain,
and France, he returned to Italy, where he stayed six
years. He began at Milan to publish accounts of his
travels in Lettere familiari a' suoi fratelli ("Familiar Let-
ters to His Brothers") ; of these the second volume of

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 291

the four he had in mind appeared at Venice; and be-
tween 1763 and 1765 he issued the first twenty-five num-
bers of the I-'ntsta lettcraria ("Literary Whip"), falsely
dated from Roverto. The Signoria having prohibited
the publication of this too pugnacious periodical, on the
pretext that it had spoken ill of Bembo, Baretti, after
issuing eight numbers more at Ancona, falsely dated from
Trent, which were directed against his most formidable
adversary, Appiano Buonafede, concluded to return to
his former quiet and laborious life in free England. He
was honored in London, where he profited by his Italian-
English Dictionary and various writings in English, aim-
ing to set Italy and the Italians in a true light. His
trial for murder, in consequence of his having killed a
man in self-defense, shows the esteem and affection he
had inspired, since famous men came forward to testify
in his favor. He had, in fact, in London, and in other
parts of the United Kingdom, friends not less illustrious
than liberal to him, like Lord Charlemont and Dr. Samuel
Johnson. In 1768 he had been elected secretary for foreign,
correspondence of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
Having accumulated considerable money, he traveled in
i768-'g through France, Flanders and Spain, and re-
turned in 1770 to Italy, but only for a few months. Lon-
don was now his city of residence ; he continued writing
and publishing with indomitable vigor of mind and body,
was pensioned by the King, and remained in London till
his death, May 5, 1789.

A sincere admirer of the English, and of their literary
versatility and genius, Baretti was largely under their
influence in his work; hence the breadth and independ-
ence of his standards. In art he had an eye to the great
of every time and place; he wrote in both English and
French; he admired Berni and Metastasio, as well as
Calderon and Lope de Vega; also Corneille, whom he
translated in his youth into indifferent verse, as well as

292 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Shakespeare, whom he defended with ardor against Vol-
taire. His tastes are not ours ; for him Dante's Commedia
was a thing obscure and tedious and Goldoni's reform
was foolishness; in irritation and hatred for blank verse,
he thought tragedies should be written in octaves and
terzets.

On the other hand, Baretti belongs to the moderns in
his freedom of judgment without regard to prejudices
of school and caste, his aversion to pretentious pedantry,
and to the fruitless waste of time and brains over eru-
dite trifles or archseologic minutiae. Paradoxes, perver-
sions, unjust praise of mediocrity and unjustifiable in-
temperance of language were not lacking in the Frusta
ktteraria, in which, hiding under the name of "Aristarco
Scannabue," the bold and sarcastic Piedmontese dealt
blows to right and left. But that "frusta" of his made
the finical poetasters jump, exterminated the crowd of
Arcadian pastor ellerie, burst the iridescent soapbubbles
of the Frugonians; it was in his hands, in short, an in-
strument of literary regeneration, foreshadowing, also, by
the connection between letters and manners, a moral and
social regeneration.

Aside from invective, Baretti made it his aim to give
his countrymen a literature full of thought, like that of
the British, but Italian in substance and form, in his
descriptive prose and in various discussions. In the Let-
ters, and in a Scelta di letters familiari fatta per reso degli
studiosi di lingua italiana (1779), there is richness of ob-
servation and research, warmth of sentiment, and a style
lucid and far removed from "academic starchiness."

The noble examples, and the sensible admonitions, of
Parini and Baretti could not avail to extinguish at one
stroke the silly poesia d'occasione; the collections of rhymes
on births, on deaths, and on taking the veil — lyric scourge
of the eighteenth century — continued cheerfully to the
end of it. But little by little they fell into discredit, and

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 293

the intonations and forms of the classics were resumed
in the lyric with more spirit than before.

Agostino Paradisi (1736-1783), of Vignola, a patrician
of Reggio in the Emilia, imitated Horace in the form of
his odes, but drew his ideas from the manners of his own
time. Luigi Ceretti (1738-1808), of Modena, who, de-
spite his small share of prudence and good breeding, held
the chair of Roman history in the University of his na-
tive city, wrote lyrics poor in ideas and sentiment, as
was natural in a man who had no distaste for petty gos-
sip and ribaldry; but his lines were not destitute of
ease and sometimes of a splendor of form which he too
borrowed from the great poet of Venosa. Other poets
native to the Duchy of the Este followed the same course
in art: Francesco Cassoli (1749-1812), Luigi Lamberti
(1759-1813), and Giovanni di Agostino Paradisi (1760-
1826), all three of Reggio, whom we shall find again
among the poets of the Republic and those of the Italian
Kingdom.

Parini was imitated by Giuseppe Zanoia (1752-1817),
of Genoa, and by some others in the form of the sermone.
But in this he divided the field with Gozzi, whose in-
fluence is shown in the work of Ippolito Pindemonte to-
gether with others of less celebrity, and that of the
priest Angelo Dalmistro (1754-1839), a Venetian born in
the island of Murano, his disciple, friend, and admirer,
who besides the sermone has left epistles in verse, trans-
lations, and various poems, in which he shows himself a
writer of sane literary taste, most studious of the classics
and of his own language.

A manner all his own is used in his satire by the Abate
Giambattista Casti (1724-1803), of Acquapendente, es-
pecially noted for some indecent tales in verse. He was
at Vienna at the court of Joseph II, visited the principal
cities of Europe with the son of the minister Kaunitz,
was appointed to the office of imperial poet by the Em-

294 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

peror Francis I, and died in Paris, a friend of the Bona-
partes, but an enemy to Napoleon. To this venal and
impudent epicurean we owe the Poeina tar tar o, in twelve
cantos, contemptuously describing the court of St. Peters-
burg and Catherine II under other names; and the Ani-
mali parlanti ("Talking Animals") , wherein, reviving the
old form of animal poems that date from "Reynard, or
the Romance of the Fox," the author devotes twenty-six
cantos to the satiric portrayal of the usages, laws, and
prejudices of his time. Casti is verbose and neglectful
in form, but he has an independent style of his own and
is not deficient in wit.

The Parinian poetry, inasmuch as it aimed to edu-
cate, was connected with the literature of the fable, which
had a more explicit moral purpose. Near the close of the
first half of the century, Tommaso Crudeli (1703-1745),
of Poppi in the Casentino, noted for the persecutions he
had suffered from the Holy Office, wrote fables felici-
tously imitating La Fontaine. In 1789, Bertola, accord-
ing to the norm he had established for this class of lit-
erature in a Saggio sopra la favola ("Essay on the
Fable"), gave some fair examples of it. About the same
time, fables and apologues had been published in large
numbers by Pignotti. Luigi Fiacchi, with the Grecian
name II Clasio (1754-1825), of Scarperia in Mugello, a
benevolent priest who taught philosophy and took part
in the labors of the academy Delia Crusca, aimed to edu-
cate children pleasantly in the hundred fables that he
had published in many editions between 1795 and 1807.
The Milanese Gaetano Perego, for certain Favole sopra
i doveri sociali ad uso delle scuole ("Fables on Social Du-
ties, for the Use of Schools"), not published till 1804,
received a gold medal in 1796, awarded by judges, one
of whom was Parini.

Lorenzo Mascheroni (1750-1800), of Bergamo, owes
not a little to the author of // Giorno, for his art in the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 295

Invito a Lesbia Cidonia, which is the only truly savory
fruit of that Arcadian production of poetry on scientific
themes which was justly called the arcadia della scienza.
In an age when the eclogue had become the vehicle of
the "arid truth," and a little of everything was described
and taught in Georgic poems — physics, astronomy, phil-
osophy, social ethics, aesthetics, from the Coltivazione dei
Riso by Giambattista Spolverini to the Sola di fisica
spcrimcntale by Barbieri, and from the Coltivazione dei
Monti by Bartolommeo Lorenzi to the Moda, the Fragole
("Strawberries"), the Perle, the Armonia of Count Giam-
battista Roberti, better known by his JEsopian fables—
in such an age the Imnto of the famous professor of
mathematics at the Athenaeum of Pavia to the Countess
Paolina Secco-Suardo Grismondi, of Bergamo, called
in Arcadia Lesbia Cidonia, to visit the scientific cabi-
nets of that University, appears to be, and truly is, a
new thing because of its variety of subject and its par-
simony of color, although written near the close of the
century, in 1793.

Mascheroni Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799), of Scan-
diano, a famous naturalist, who also taught in the Uni-
versity of Pavia, and who added to scientific ability the
rarer quality of writer, carried to perfection a happy com-
bination of truth patiently sought with the spirit of ar-
tistic genius, which, initiated by Galileo, was practised
in the first half of the eighteenth century. Then, while
versifiers gamboled in Arcadia; while the romance,
the novel, and the jocose poem continued to drag out an
insipid life; while in the field of chivalric poetry only
the facile and witty Ricciardetto by Monsignor Niccolo
Forteguerri, of Pistoia, published posthumously in 1738,
continued with some innovations the traditions, and, in
part, the material of the Morgante, the Furioso, the 7n-
namorato, re-made by Berni, Manfredi, the two Zanotti,
and Ghedini, all of Bologna, flourished in the first fifty

296 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

years of the eighteenth century, and applied themselves
to give new life to the literature of Italy.

Eustachio Manfredi (1675-1734) was an able mathema-
tician, a famous student of astronomy and of hydraulics,
a professor at Bologna University and an associate of
the Academies of Science of Paris and London; but he
devoted his leisure entirely to literary studies; and, as
in science he had made war on the last remnant of the
scholastic method, so in art he exerted himself to de-
stroy what remained of the vacuous and notorious tu-
midity of the poets of the secento, returning hi his
verses, few but good, to the manner of Petrarch of the
cinquecentists and of the classics. Two other scien-
tists, Fernando Antonio Ghedini (1684-1768) and Fran-
cesco Maria Zanotti (1692-1777), avoided the perverted
taste of their age, the first in his Rime and Lettere, the
second in many writings on various subjects and in vari-
ous styles. Zanotti, a man of subtle intellect and great
learning, treated a speculative theme in his Filosofia mo-
rale, rhetoric in Dell' arte poetica, the fine arts in three
famous discourses, and physics in the Dialoghi della forza
del corpi che chiamano viva ("Dialogues on Vital Energy").
He was at the same time an elegant Latinist, as shown
in his extended history of the Institute of Science at Bo-
logna, and a connoisseur in Italian speech, as revealed
in his works in that language, admirable for clearness,
grace, and restraint in style. His brother Giampietro,
a painter, left some good work in literature but is much
less famous than Francesco, who was made an associate
by the Academies of Berlin and London, and held in
honor by Fontenelle and Voltaire.

Muratori and Zeno, who had pursued historical and
philological studies with good results in the first half
of the eighteenth century, had a worthy successor in
Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731-1794), of Bergamo, a Jesuit,
at first professor of eloquence at Milan, then librarian

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 297

at Modena. In his full and most important Storia della
letteratura italiana, permanently useful to students, he
gives copious and well arranged information in regard
to the letters and the culture of Italy from the remotest
times to the year 1700. But, as Tiraboschi's work is
deficient in aesthetic criticism, containing a few super-
ficial or erroneous judgments of the authors of whom
he speaks, so the other works of the same nature written
about the same time in Italy were in general deficient
in the solid foundation of facts drawn from documents
and other sources. Some works worthy of notice, and
yet inferior to Tiraboschi's learned Bibliotcca modencsc (of
Modena), are Angelo Fabbroni's Vita: Italorum, Pietro
Napoli-Signorelli's Storia critica dci tcatri antichi c moderni
("Critical History of the Ancient and Modern Drama"),
and histories of the fine arts by Francesco Milizia and
Luigi Linzi.

It may be said, in general, that the trans-Alpine "en-
cyclopasdism," too much admired, diverted the Italians
from patient and profound study. Literary criticism,
not associated with learning, is devoted to the setting
forth of subjective judgment upon works of art; histor-
ical criticism concerns itself with breadth of conception
and largeness of design more than with accuracy in facts
and correctness of opinion, as is shown in the French
and Italian works of Carlo Deniria (1731-1813), of Re-
vello in Piedmont, not excluding his lauded history of
the Rwokutioni d'ltalia*

Italian genius shines more brilliantly in this age in
the studies of law and political economy. In the first
half of the eighteenth century, Pietro Giannone (1676-
1748), of Ischitella in Capitanata, wrote his Istoria cirilc
del Rcgtw di Napoli. He made use of his knowledge of
law to follow the details of the institutions of Naples
and to impugn the legitimacy of the interference of the
Church in its civil affairs. This drew upon him the

298 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

hatred of the Roman Curia ; and after living as a refugee
in many places, he was imprisoned in the citadel of Turin
upon his return to Savoy, and died in captivity. In the
last half of the century Niccola Spedalieri (1740-95), of
Bronte in Sicily, published / diritli dell' Uomo ("The
Rights of Man"), maintaining that the social compact
is the work of man, not the ordinance of God, and there-
fore that nations have the right to depose sovereigns
that violate it.

Political economy was first taught in Europe by An-
tonio Genovesi (1712-1769), of Castiglione in the Saler-
nitano, who occupied a chair in Naples instituted in
1754 by the Florentine Bartolomeo Intieri. He published
his lectures in 1765, and is the author of various works
for promoting philosophic and scientific culture. In
Naples, the most distinguished representative of the
philosophic-political school of Vico was Gaetano Filan-
gieri (1752-1788), who, among his many studies, was
especially devoted to that of law. In his great work La
scienza della legislazione, which remained incomplete at
his early death, he showed how the laws should conform
to varying civil ideas. In a style indifferently good, he
expressed noble ideas, in great part original, which give
him a place beside Montesquieu and other contempor-
aneous French writers to whom he owed inspiration.
Another writer on legislative reform was Maria Pagano,
of Brienza in the Basilicata, a follower of Vico, who at
the age of fifty-one died on the gallows in the reaction
of 1799.

No less distinguished were some cultivators of these
subjects in Milan. The Marquis Cesare Beccaria (1738-
'94), professor of Economy in the Gymnasium of Brera,
moved the world by his classic work, published in 1764
and immediately translated into the other languages of
Europe: Dei dclitti e delle pcne ("Of Crimes and Penal-
ties"). In it he inveighed against the cruelty of judicial

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 299

proceedings at that time and opposed torture and the
death penalty, in the name of the new principles of phi-
lanthropy. The theme had been suggested to him by
Count Pietro Verri (1728-1797), his fellow-citizen, friend
and companion. Verri founded, in 1764, the journal,
// cafft, in collaboration with his brother Alessandro,
famous for Le notti Romane, in which are imaginary con-
versations with the shades of the Scipios concerning
Roman and Christian civilizations. Beccaria and others
were also associates in // caffe. In this journal, of which
he was the soul, as well as in his other varied writings,
among them a history of Milan, Pietro Verri proposes
reforms and provisions of public utility, combating er-
rors, disregarding rules and traditions, and putting aside
obsolete moral and social prejudices.

Thus, even before the great whirlwind of the Revolu-
tion arose to eradicate abuses and privileges, a host of
literati, philosophers, jurisconsults, and economists were
making war in Italy against such abuses and privileges,
and, while awakening the intellect of the Italian people,
were gradually educating the national conscience.
When, therefore, the doctrines of the Revolution were
forced upon us by foreign arms, they found a soil pre-
pared to receive them.

the French victories in 1796 by which the
political order of Italy was subverted, to the
restoration of the old seigniories by the Con-
gress of Vienna in 1815, our history ran through
an agitated and hazardous period. There is no doubt

300 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

that the French conquest, speaking to us of independence
and liberty, invoking the memories of our remote and
glorious past, materially contributed to awaken in U3
the consciousness and the sentiment of "Italianity," and
having broken down the barriers between State and
State, started our country on the road that was to lead
it ultimately to unity. But the great whirlwind of the
French Revolution, breaking suddenly upon us, left us
appalled and almost bewildered ; between opposing prin-
ciples and the contradictory impulses arising from them,
we were perplexed, mutable, discordant. All this is re-
flected in the life and the art of Monti, chief of our liter-
ati in that age.

Vincenzo Monti was born at Alfonsine, near Ravenna,
February 19, 1754, and lived in Rome after 1778, amid
the aristocracy and clergy. He began as an Arcadian,
a Frugonian, and an imitator of a poet who was himself
an imitator, Alfonso Varano, a Ferrarese, of the signers
of Camerino, — his Visione in tcrza rima being imitated
from Dante, Bibbiena, and Milton's Paradise Lost. But
in 1779 Monti, inspired by an antique bust that was
brought to light, wrote the Prosopopea di Pericle, initiating
a new lyric style, frankly classic, which he carried to
a greater height of spirit and perfection five years later
in the ode Al signor di Montgolfier.

This became the prevailing tendency in lyric art; for
Cassoli interpreted admirably in some of his odes the
subtler meanings of Horace; Lamberti built his own
verses on classic theories, and Giovanni Paradisi imi-
tated the lyric poet of Venosa even more closely than the
other Emilians (natives of the Emilian provinces). Monti
interwove it skilfully with various imitations from the
ancients and moderns. Thus he made Alfieri his model
for Aristodemo, a tragedy on a Greek subject, which was
represented first in Parma, afterward, in January, 1787,
in Rome, where Goethe was one of the applauding spec-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 301

tators. A year later he put upon the stage Galcotto Man-
frcdi, a mediaeval subject, the form classic, with Shakes-
pearean reminiscences; and about the same time Caio
Gracco, showing still more plainly the influence of the
English dramatist. The sentiments and tendencies of
Monti in this first period of his life, while he was the
poet of the Roman aristocracy and of the prelates of
the Curia, are reflected in the Bassrilliana, a poem of four
cantos in terzine, on the subject of the murder in 1793, by
the mob in Rome, of the Frenchman Hugues Bassville,
secretary of the French legation at Naples, who had
come there in the interest of the Republican propaganda.
In this poem Monti condemns severely the work of the
Revolutionists ; as to the art, it is on the lines of Varano
but far surpasses him, while it approaches Dante so
nearly in certain imagery and characters of style that
he was saluted, in most extravagant praise, as "Dante
redivivus." He has, as usual, an eye to the classics, and
grafts on the imitation of these models some reminis-
cences of Bibbiena and Klopstock; the whole garbed in,
splendid verse, with a residuum of Frugonian sonority.

The Bassvilliana is of the year 1793, and of the same
year is the Musagonia, classic in plan and form, where,
among other expressions, Monti exhorts the Emperor of
Austria to move against "the impious seed of Brennus."
But in March, 1797, Marmont, Bonaparte's aide-de-camp,
having come to Rome, Monti left the city with him,
passing at a bound from an enemy to a friend of Re-
publicanism. The change did not take place without
comments and derision on the part of his adversaries.
At Milan, where Monti went from Bologna, capital of
the Cispadan Republic, he was assailed with violence by
Francesco Gianni (1750-1822), a Roman and a famous
extempore poet. But the sincerity of the transmuta-
tion of "Abate Monti" into "Citizen Monti" is attested
by some poems inspired by the love of liberty — // fana-

302 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

tisvw ("Fanaticism"), La Super stiziow, II Pericolo ("The
Danger"), in tcrsa rima, and the Promcteo ("Prometheus"),
glorifying Bonaparte in most admirable blank verse. "To
promote the love of Latin and Greek, which we have
long neglected to the greatest detriment of our poetry,"
is now Monti's declared intention, in pursuance of which,
as the standard-bearer of a numerous host, he unfurls
the banner of "Neoclassicism."

When the Austrians occupied Lombardy in 1799, the
author of the vigorous canzonets, Per il congresso di Udine
and other ardent Republican poems, was obliged to go
into exile. He went to Paris, where he busied himself
in translating into octaves Voltaire's Pucelle $ Orleans and
completing Caio Gracco. After the battle of Marengo
(June 14, 1800) he returned to his own country and was
chosen Professor of Eloquence and Poetry in the Uni-
versity of Pavia. At this time he wrote the ode, Bella
Italia, amate sponde ("Beautifully Italy, beloved shores"),
and the Mascheroniana, a poem in terzets inspired by the
death of Lorenzo Mascheroni, an exile with him at Paris.
The plan of it, suggested by the Commedia, is nebulous
and at times incoherent; but it is vibrant with strong
emotion ; it is in truth Dantesque as regards the variety,
the harmony, and the splendor, even excessive, of its
style. It expresses temperate political ideas; the good
and the evil of the Revolution are set forth. A man of
such opinions could pass easily to glorification of the
Emperor.

Monti was taken from the University in 1804, and was
named poet of the Italian Government and assistant
counselor to the Minister of the Interior for the fine arts
in relation with letters; later, after the proclamation of
Napoleon I, he had also the title of Historiographer of
the Kingdom. But he wrote no histories ; he celebrated
the events of the Empire and of the Kingdom of Italy
in lyrics and other poems. Specially noteworthy among

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 303

these is // bardo dclla Sclva Nera ("The Bard of the Black
Forest"), which returns to the so-called "bardic" poetry,
cultivated in England by Gray and Macpherson and in
Germany by Klopstock, which writers Monti had in mind
in writing his "polimetro"; and La spada di Federico II
("The Sword of Frederick II"), where the principal in-
cident is suggested by one in Shakespeare's Macbeth —
a hand dripping with blood tries to prevent Napoleon
from grasping the sword placed upon the tomb of the
Prussian King. Meantime Monti worked at a translation
of the Iliad, using a Latin version, since he did not know
Greek well enough ; it is among the best of his writings,
and is still read with delight and profit by those unable
to enjoy the original. It was published in 1810, and
again, after revision, two years later, gaining immediate
applause by the fluidity, richness and harmony of the
language and the versification.

When the Austrian domination was restored in Lom-
bardy, Monti rendered homage to the new masters —
Mistico omaggio ("Mystical Homage"), Ritorno d'Astrea
("Return of Astraea"), Invito a Pallade ("Invitation to
Pallas") — and he succeeded in retaining a part of the lib-
eral pension he had enjoyed. He was invited to collab-
orate in the Bibliotcca italiana, a literary journal of re-
actionary principles, founded and maintained by the new
Government. In the last years of his life he devoted him-
self to the study of language, opposing the purists in a
Proposta di corrczioni cd aggiiintc al Vocabolario della crusca.
But he did not neglect the muses; for at this time he
took up again, but did not finish, the Feroniade, a poem
begun in his youth, and published an idyl, Lc nozzc di
Cadmo e d'Ernrione ("The Nuptials of Cadmus and Her-
mione") ; and in opposition to the romantic school, of
which we shall soon speak, he wrote a scrmone in de-
fense of mythology, splendid in style, quite weak in ar-
gument. His old age was saddened by physical in-

304 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

firmities and moral afflictions; he died October 13, 1828.
, Though mutable in his opinions, by a singular mobil-
ity of imagination, Vincenzo Monti was neither a cow-
ard nor an egoist; he loved his country, and was affec-
tionate and benevolent. In art, it cannot be denied that
he did not leave a great impress by his versatile and
fecund genius. The Bassvilliana was warmly admired, and
still is, in parts. We prefer to it the Mascheroniana, which
is less redundant and resonant, the Bellezza dell' Universe,
a poem that has surprisingly fine passages, and the
Feroniade, a poem in blank verse, exquisitely elaborated,
which celebrated with mythologic imagery the draining
of the Pontine Marshes undertaken by Pius VI. Fur-
(ther, some scenes of his tragedies and some of his lyrics
as the ode to Montgolfier, the canzone, Per il congresso di
Udine, and a sonnet on the portrait of his daughter, merit
the popularity they have enjoyed. Monti, as has been
seen, owed his first inspiration to the Arcadians; sug-
gestions of imagery and meters came to him not only
from Frugoni, but from Onofrio Minzoni and Giuliano
Cassiani, both authors of the eighteenth century; one
Celebrated for hyperbolic sonnets — Quando Gesu coll' ultimo
lamento, and others — and one for descriptive sonnets,
among them a famous one on the rape of Proserpine.
But later Monti, harmonizing imitation of the classics
with that of great modern writers, and turning at length
to a stricter classicism, found his proper manner, the
chief traits of which are splendor of style, richness of
color, and the orderly flow of the measure ; he was hailed
as the prince of the Italian poets of his time. But vigor
of conception, elevation of spirit, productive and animat-
ing ideality are deficient in the art of this marvelous
maker of verse. Under the veil of the beautiful imagery
and the mythologic ornament one seeks, vainly for the
tnost part, for a true poetic content. The poetry of his-
torical events, which prevails in Monti's work, held the

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 305

field among us in the age when he was in his glory. The
Pronea (1807) of Cesarotti, which is incense to Bona-
parte, justly seemed to Foscolo "all melodramatic ca-
dences, visions, and phrase-making." The poetry of the
Veronese, Giuseppe Giulio Ceroni, is in general inspired
by the love of liberty and country, as also is that of An-
tonio Gasparinetti of Ponte di Piave near Treviso, who
fought with Foscolo in the army of the Cisalpine Re-
public.

Teresa Bandettini ("Amarilli Etrusca" was her name
in Arcadia), an extempore poet of Lucca, turned at this
time toward history and politics the inspiration that had
previously been rechauffe in the conservatories of the
Academies. Giovanni Pindemonte, brother of the more
celebrated Ippolito, a democrat and author of tragedies
after the manner of Alfieri, followed with song the tum-
ultuous course of events that ran from revolution to
reaction. The occurrences of the time were the themes
of another poet of distinction, Giovanni Fantoni ("La-
bindo"), of Fivizzano (1755-1807), who after an advent-
urous and irregular life, ended as Perpetual Secretary
of the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara.

Fantoni wrote notable political poems, among them
the very popular song, Ora siam piccoli ma crescercmo.
His name, moreover, is connected with Horatian odes
on various subjects, which, though not sufficiently pol-
ished and homogeneous in style, attesting the lack of the
lima labor necessary to every work of art, yet in more
than one passage have lyric nerve and impetus; and,
aside from these merits in form — the content is in gen-
eral of small value — they deserve to be read for the imi-
tation, or rather assimilation, of classic meters, attempted
in them with criteria not substantially diverse from
those followed later by a different genius, Carducci.

Angelo Mazza (1741-1817), of Parma, called in Ar-
cadia "Armonide Elideo," whose first essays were ver-

20

306 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

sions from the English, but who at the same time stud-
ied con anwre the Greek lyrists, especially Pindar, rose
to fame through some new forms of art he attempted.
Expressing in his poetry a mystic Platonism, he sang
among other things I' aura armonica or musical harmony;
his style and rhythm approached the Frugonian manner.
All this sonorous poetry, with its classic style, but cold
and empty, with the exception of some elegies by Salo-
mone Fiorentino on the death of his wife, was not en-
tirely without influence on a true and great poet, in-
deed among the greatest of our age, Ugo Foscolo.

Niccolo Ugo Foscolo was born in Zante, February 6,
1778, of a Venetian father and a Greek mother; he lived
in poverty at Venice from 1792 to 1797, enamored of
literary studies, and in time writing verses. He was en-
couraged in his love for poetry by Cesarotti in Padua;
the sentiment of Italian liberty was kindled in him by
the tragedies of Alfieri; and before he was nineteen he
put upon the stage with applause the Tieste, a tragedy
dedicated to the great Piedmontese, Alfieri, and filled
with his spirit and accents. In 1797, the Cispadan Re-
public having been formed, he went to Bologna as a
volunteer in the legion of cavalry. There he wrote an
ode, Bonaparte liberatore, which was printed at public ex-
pense; but meantime, the democratic Government hav-
ing been established in Venice, he returned at once and
obtained public office.

At the fall of the Venetian Republic, he took refuge,
sorrowing and raging, in Milan. There he became ac-
quainted with Parini, then an old man, formed a friend-
ship with Monti, afterward his enemy, and worked upon
the Monitore italicmo. At the coming of the Austro-Rus-
sians he was enrolled, after various reverses, in the Cis-
alpine legion and fought under General Massena at the
time of the memorable siege of Genoa, where he wrote
an ode deservedly celebrated, A Luigia Pallavacini car

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 307

duta da cavallo (1800). After the taking of Genoa and
the battle of Marengo, he went to Milan. In these years,
1801-3, he was in love with Antonietta Fagnani-Arese,
for whom he wrote another fine ode : All' arnica risanata
("To the Friend Recovered from Illness"). Then he was
in military service in France, 1804-6, in the Italian di-
vision added to the French army, with the rank of cap-
tain; thence, running from one city to another as from
one to another love, he returned to Milan, and there and
at Brescia and at Pavia he passed the following years.
At Brescia he published his masterpiece, I Sepolcri. At
Pavia he succeeded Cerretti in the professorship of elo-
quence that Monti had held, but remained in it only a
short time. His life now became still more stormy; he
made enemies, he was persecuted by the police; he had
to repair to Florence; but his literary occupations were
not interrupted.

When the star of Napoleon turned toward its setting,
love of country constrained him to offer his services
to the Viceroy and to Italy and reenter the army. But
the Austrians re-conquered Milan (1814) ; and FoscoJo,
not listening to the allurements of the new Government,
nobly entered in 1815 the way of exile. He went first
to Switzerland, and a year later to London, rejoicing in
the metropolis of free England as a writer and a patriot.
There, with the income from his literary labors, he
imagined that he could live as a gran sign-ore; but, hav-
ing wasted his considerable earnings, he was compelled,
in order to pay his debts, to give lessons and write ar-
ticles on Italian affairs for the English journals. He died
at Turnham Green, near London, September 10, 1827.

Although mutable in his love affairs, and not immune
from errors, Foscolo, by the sound temper of his charac-
ter, by his loyalty to his political ideas, by the warm
sentiment that he infused into his verses, belongs more
really than Monti to the generation that prepared the

308 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

redemption of Italy. His soul lives again in his numer-
ous and important letters; all his literary work is in-
formed by a high artistic spirit. For if he began, as
always happens, by imitating the most famous of the
poets, he soon found his own path and pursued it with
steady enthusiasm, repudiating the defective verses of
his youth.

Foscolo's name is especially linked to two 01 his works
— the Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and the Sepolcri. The
former, published in 1798, with the title Vera storia di
due amanti infelici ("True story of two unhappy lovers"),
and with its final revision and new title republished in
1802, is a psychologic romance in the form of letters,
resembling Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, but with the
addition of an elevated patriotic tone, which had a great
influence upon the Italians of the time. The hero of the
German romance is driven to suicide solely by unfortu-
nate love; that of the Italian in addition by grief for
the calamity of his country. In Jacopo Ortis, Foscolo,
taking the first inspiration, but nothing more, from an
actual event, represented himself "save for the name and
the consummated suicidal act." To-day this romance,
by its continuous and somewhat exaggerated sentimen-
tality, by a something forced about it, fails of the effect it
had at one time ; but it has eloquent passages and beau-
tiful descriptions.

Much more important, and in respect of art infinitely
superior, is the Sepolcri (1807), one of the most highly
lyric poems that Italy can boast, in which, as Carducci
well observes, "are united in one sole and sublime har-
mony the accents of the discourse and the hymn, of the
elegy and the satire, of the tragedy and the epic." The
fundamental idea of the piece, which is not long, consist-
ing of two hundred and ninety-five unrhymed hendeca-
syllabic lines, is connected with the flowering of sepul-
chral poetry throughout Europe. But Foscolo has devel-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 309

oped his theme with a great variety of tones and move-
ments, with intimate profundity of sentiment. He has
given the poem a Grecian purity of line, a wisely tem-
pered flow of harmony, an elevation of thought other-
wise unknown to our art after Petrarch and before Leo-
pardi. With intent to show the moral and civil utility
of the cult of the tomb, arousing the Italian conscience
by the remembrance and the examples of the great dead,
Foscolo, upon the simple scheme of a didactic poem, so
many of which were written in the eighteenth century,
elaborates brilliant and splendid ornamentation of im-
agery, lyric effects that move to wonder and sympathy.

Among other poems of Foscolo's the first place is
taken by the odes already named, admirable for flexibil-
ity of movement and for the classic limpidity of the
poetic fancies. The Grasie draws its inspiration from the
purest sources of ancient art. The idea came to Fos-
colo "on seeing Canova at work on a group of the
Graces." He intended to "prepare a series of designs
for use in the fine arts," but could not bring it to com-
pletion, and left it fragmentary. Again, most beautiful,
by the force and sincerity of the sentiment, are some
sonnets of this poet, not profuse, but original, which,
as with Monti, were inspired by the art of the Greeks
and of the Romans. Foscolo succeeded much better than
Monti in catching their spirit, aided, perhaps by the
Hellenic blood in his veins. On the other hand his
tragedies are mediocre — Tieste, Ajace, Ricciarda; and much
inferior to Monti's is the translation of the Iliad, which
he attempted but did not finish. As a prose-writer he is
worthy of great praise; besides the Ortis he left numer-
ous writings on various subjects, affording examples of
many styles; for instance, he is eloquent and solemn in
the inaugural address read at the Athenaeum of Pavia,
January 22, 1809, DclF origine c dell' nfficio dclla lettcratura;
subtle and graceful in the translation of Laurence

310 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Sterne's Sentimental Journey; clear and dignified in his
copious critical writings, the most notable of which is an
excellent discourse on the text of the Divina Commedia.
As a critic he is among the best that Italy had before De
Sanctis, who renders homage to his distinguished pred-
ecessor, pronouncing him "the first of Italian critics to
consider a work of art as a psychologic phenomenon and
seek the springs of it in the soul of the writer and in
the atmosphere of the century in which he was born."

In writing his immortal poem on the Sepolcri, Fos-
colo may have known the design and some parts of a
poem upon Cimiteri, by Ippolito Pindemonte (1753-1828),
of Verona. Although inferior to Monti and Foscolo,
Pindemonte ranks next the them amid the host of poets
and prose-writers of the time who aimed to approach
classic models in their art, while drawing their inspira-
tion and their subjects from contemporary events and
from foreign literatures. Pindemonte, a gentleman who,
so far from being a reactionist, had in youth shared Al-
fieri's enthusiasm for the ruins of the Bastile, was of
a mild disposition and inclined to melancholy; his many
and varied writings in prose and verse are in general
lacking in vigor. His translation of the Odyssey, a poem
less tumultuous than the Iliad and therefore more con-
genial to Pindemonte's nature, has graces of style, but
from over care in finish it gives the impression of affec-
tation. The Epistole are graceful discussions, critical and
moral, in verse. In his pastoral poems and elsewhere,
Pindemonte, though a classicist, has a host of melancholy
fantasies adapted to the taste of the romanticists. More-
over, if he has an eye to the Greeks and Latins, he owes
not a little to writers dear to the romanticists; for in
the Lcttcre d'una monaca a Fcderico IV re di Danimarca
("Letters of a Nun to Frederic IV of Denmark") there
is a reminiscence of Pope's "Heloi'se to Abelard,"and in
the romance Abaritte of Johnson's Rassd-as; in his pastoral

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 311

poetry he appears to be a disciple of Pope and of Gray,
and in the tragedy Arminio he imitates Shakespeare.
One of his best and most noted pieces is the letter in
verse with which he responds to Foscolo's dedication to
him of the Scpolcri.

Many other versions from the Greeks and from the
Latins were made by this school of "classicists" besides
the Homeric translations, of their leaders. The hymns
of Callimachus and Virgil's Bucolics and Gcorgics were
rendered into fine Italian verse by Diogini Strocchi
(1762-1850), of Faenza, the author of some mediocre
verse, and didactic and academic prose, intended to de-
fend his own practice against the new theories of art
and language. Others took up the instructive class of
poem, overworked by the eighteenth-century poets, with
better mastery of art and style. Cesare Arid, for ex-
ample, a Brescian living from 1782 to 1836, though he
wrote sacred hymns and other poems, did better work
in La coltivazione degli ulivi ("olive-trees"), // corallo, La
pastorizia, and L'origine ddlc fonti ("springs"). The Al-
fierian tragic style was adopted, not ineptly, by Fran-
cesco Benedetti, of Cortona, who committed suicide at
the age of thirty-six, despairing of Italy and of himself
after the reverses of 1821.

More conspicuous than these were certain prose-wri-
ters of the time. Count Gianfrancesco Galeani Napione
(1748-1830), of Turin, who was not prevented from pur-
suing scholarly and critical studies with profit by the
cares of the high offices he held under the Government,
wrote with ability Dell' uso e dei pregi della lingua italiana
(1791), aiming above all to promote the use of pure Ital-
ian and Italian sentiment in his native Piedmont, where
the tendency was to adopt modes and usages from the
French. Father Antonio Cesari (1760-1828), of Verona,
made vigorous war against the corruption of the lan-
guage, so prevalent, as we have seen, in the writers of

312 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the eighteenth century; he took as models the writers
of the fourteenth, and by elaborate vocabularies and re-
prints strove to diffuse a knowledge of the works in the
vernacular of that age. His Dissertazione sopra lo stato
present e delta lingtta italiana (1810), his dialogue, The
Graces, where he discusses propriety and elegance of lan-
guage, the dialogues on the beauties of Dante's Commedia,
and other writings of his, which he aimed to clothe in
the eloquence of the good century, were the inspiration
and the basis of the so-called "purism," which, even
though sometimes carried to ridiculous excess, contrib-
uted to free us from the evil of linguistic slovenliness.

Clementino Vannetti (1754-1795), of Rovereto, a close
friend of Cesari, aided him in the Additions to the Delia
Crusca Dictionary. He wrote discourses, epistles and
other poems, and various prose pieces savoring of the
'trecento, which are not destitute of wit and grace. He
and others that cannot be mentioned individually, co-
operated ably in the work of purifying the language with
the good priest of Verona. His precepts were further
diffused in Michele Colombo's Lessons on the Heritage of
a Cultured Language (1812), the little treatise Dell' elo-
cuzione (1818), by Paolo Costa, who also wrote elegant
verse as well as comments on the Commedia, and in Luigi
Fornaciari's Examples of Good Writing (1829).

Naturally, Father Cesari did not lack opponents and
deriders. The greatest authority among them was Vin-
cenzo Monti. Cesarotti, a great advocate of the ideas of
his time, who had embellished Homer according to the
taste of the eighteenth century, had come forward in
1785 with an Essay on the Italian Language, in defense
of the idiom corrupted by foreign words and somewhat
also by fantastic individual coinages, which was used by
contemporary writers. Monti, in the Proposta already
recorded, declared that he wished the language to be not
Tuscan but Italian, making little account of the rights

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 313

of popular usage, and bitterly censuring the Delia Crus-
ca Dictionary. Monti's son-in-law, Count Giulio Perti-
cari (1779-1822), assisted him in the Proposta and wrote
two dissertations to show that judicious imitation of the
authors of the trccnito need not involve neglect of those
of succeeding centuries.

A middle way between Cesari and Monti was taken by
the "dictator" of Italian prose in the first half of the
nineteenth century, a writer truly unique and accom-
plished, Pietro Giordani (1774-1848), of Piacenza. From
1808 to 1815, he "was pro-secretary of the Academy of
Fine Arts in Bologna, where he formed a friendship with
the celebrated Antonio Canova, leader of the classicists
in sculpture, as were he and Monti, respectively, in prose
and in verse. At Milan, where he lived after he was ban-
ished by the restored Papal Government, he collaborated
with Monti in defense of classicism, in the Biblioteca
italiana. Then, having inherited property enough to en-
able him to live at leisure, he took up his residence in his
own city; but in 1824 he was banished thence, and went
to Florence, entering the circle of literati gathered about
Gian Pietro Viesseux, founder of the celebrated period-
ical I'Antokgia. Liberal ideas, philanthropic institutions,
civil progress, scientific discoveries, had in him an ad-
mirer and an enthusiastic and generous patron. He loved
and protected Leopardi and praised him unstintedly; he
aided Colletta.and, by the History of Sculpture Leopaldo
Cicognara; in conversation he was scholarly and genial.
When he died, at Parma in 1848, many feared that the
restoration of the bcllo scrivere to which he was devoted
might remain half completed. He left no important and
powerful work; but elegies, biographies, sketches, epi-
graphs, proems and a large correspondence set forth his
theories and attest his excellence as a stylist highly fin-
ished and often vigorous.

Like Giordani, another prose-writer of the first de-

314 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

cades of the nineteenth century, Carlo Botta (1766-
3837), of Sangiorgio del Canavese, without rising to the
higher levels in art, presents a peculiar and characteristic
figure. He followed the fortunes of the French army in
the Italian campaign of i7g6-'7, as a physician was at
the head of the military hospital at Corfu, took part in
the provisional government in Piedmont in 1798, was
chosen deputy to the legislative body of the Department
of the Dora in 1804, took up his residence in Paris, was
rector of the Accademia Universitaria of Rouen from
1817 to 1822, and was at last pensioned by Charles Al-
bert and made a Knight of the Order of Civil Merit of
Savoy. His History of the War of Independence of the
United States of America (1809), in Italian, abounding in
accurate information concerning an event so important
and not before treated in full by any one, was received
with great favor and translated into French and English.
His History of Italy from 1789 to 1814 (1824), is better
in style, and, notwithstanding a certain disproportion in
the parts, is useful and attractive. The continuation of
iGuicciardini's history of 1789, which he published in
1832, is less valuable, giving evidence of the haste in
which it was written. But, on the whole, Botta is a his-
torian, if not always candid and dispassionate, yet with
breadth of conception and nobility of sentiment. As a
prose-writer he has a solemnity that often becomes tu-
midity, and elegance of diction a little affected.

Many other historians flourished in this part of the
nineteenth century, who were not lacking in excellence
of matter and form. Melchiorre Delfico (1744-1821), of
Teramo, author of many philosophical and legal wri-
tings, is noted above all for his Historical Memories or
the Republic of San Marino. Lazzaro Papi (1763-1834)
of Pontito in the province of Lucca, made a translation
of Milton which is praised, and left impartial, candid
and judicious Commentaries on the French Revolution. To

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 315

Vincenzo Coco (1770-1823), of Civita Campomorano in
the province of Molise, we owe, not only Platone in
Italia, a philosophic-archaeologic romance, but also an
acute and important Historical Essay on the Revolution in
Naples of 1799.

Giuseppe Micali (1769-1844), of Leghorn, in his work
L'ltalia aranti il dominio del Romani ("Italy before the
Dominion of the Romans") pointed out a new way of
regarding the story of ancient Italy. Pietro Colletta
(1775-1831), a Neapolitan, was honored with high mili-
tary and civil offices under Joachim Murat, and then,
after the restoration of the Bourbons, was imprisoned
and banished to Moravia, but in 1823 he was allowed to
establish himself in Florence. There he formed friend-
ships with Giordani, Leopardi, and Gino Capponi, and
wrote a History of the Kingdom of Naples from 1734 to
1825. Despite some inaccuracies, even wilful, caused
by political passion, the history has moral and civic
value ; the style is concise and vigorous, and in more than
one passage it is admirably eloquent and picturesque.

In contrast with the classic manner, came gradually
into our literature, during the early decades of the nine-
teenth century, a method of art diverse and in certain
respects opposed to that, which in turn gave place to
a new manner, that of the romanticists. Whence the
impulse and the name?

The name came from Germany in the second half of
the preceding century. Certain German writers calling
themselves Romanticists wished to oppose a national
art to the abject imitation of the French classics of the
Golden Age, and restore their literature to the characters
and forms of the Middle Ages in the Romance languages.
It was, then, romanticism, a return of art to the religious,
heroic and chivalric ideals of the Middle Ages — spon-
taneous and national in character with Germanic peo-
ples, artificial and adventitious with us, children of Rome.

316 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

In France, where the Revolution and the First Empire
had re-invested arts and letters with classic armor, rom-
anticism meant opposition to Jacobin impiety and Na-
poleonic supremacy; against irreligious ideas it placed
the books of Chateaubriand; against Bonaparte, those of
Madame de Stael, his fierce adversary. In Italy, as a
natural result of the study of foreign literatures, roman-
ticism had gained a footing at the close of the eighteenth
century. The sensibility, the tendency to melancholy
and gloom, the care given to psychologic analysis, and
other elements of romanticism were already scattered
through our eighteenth-century literature.

But as a regular system of literary doctrine romanti-
cism appeared first among us with Giovanni Berchet
(1783-1851), of Milan. In 1816 he published a pamph-
let Sul cacciatore feroce e sid Ekanora di G. A. Burger,
lettera semiseria di Grisostomo ("On The Wild Huntsman
and the Lenore of G. A. Burger; a semi-serious letter
of Grisostomo"). He imagines that Grisostomo, present-
ing his son with prose translations of Burger's two cele-
brated ballads, takes occasion to say that poetry ought
to express only those emotions and sentiments that find
an echo in modern souls; adding other opinions, which,
taken together, form a kind of manifesto of the new
school. A controversy arose immediately, three Milanese
journals leading the debate — // conciliatore (1818-19), ro-
mantic in art and liberal in politics, La biblioteca italiana,
and L'accattabrighe, classicist and Austrian in politics.
(An accattabrighe is a quarrelsome or disputatious man).
The first-named originated in the house of Count Luigi
Porro-Lambertenghi, and among its contributors were
men of nobility and patriotism, as Berchet himself, Rom-
agnosi and Melchiorre Gioia ; the soul of it was the tutor
of POTTO'S sons, Silvio Pellico (1789-1854), of Saluzzo,
a great friend of Foscolo's and author of a tragedy,
Francesca da Rimini (1815), which excited admiration

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 317

mingled with most lively emotion in spectators of every
part of Italy, by its sentiment and its patriotism.

But, under the literary contest, political persecution
was brooding. Berchet escaped from it by flight, lived in
London till 1829, and then traveled through various coun-
tries with the Arconati family. In 1848 he saw his
Milan again; but the Austrian domination having now
been reestablished, he was compelled to fly, and took
up his residence in Turin and did not move again. From
far and from near he was always inciting the Italians to
battle with his songs. Among the poets of our Restora-
tion, a little turbid and muddy in their impetus, like Al-
pine torrents, if he was not the least incorrect in form,
he rose above the others by force of sentiment, by a sing-
ular fierceness of patriotic imagination.

But Silvio Pellico was arrested, tried at Venice, and
condemned to death; then, by imperial grace, his sentence
was commuted to imprisonment in the fortress of Spiel-
berg, where he languished more than eight years, weak-
ening in mind and body. In 1830 he was discharged
from prison, and afterward he devoted himself to works
of piety and practical duties. But in 1832 he published
Le mie prigione ("My Prisons"), a candid and truthful
narrative of what he had suffered. His aim was to in-
spire others with his religious fervor; but without in-
tending it he injured the oppressors of Italy more than
if he had loaded them with reproaches. For that little
golden book, full of exquisite delicacy of sentiment and
in the highest degree suggestive in its simplicity, became
deservedly most popular.

The company of the Condliatore being disbanded, Ber-
chet in exile, Pellico in prison, still the classicists did not
enjoy vendetta allegro, ("glad vengeance"). Certain prin-
ciples of the audacious boreal school were now well es-
tablished in the consciousness of the Italians; and Monti,
rising against them in the Sermane sulla Mitologia (1825),

318 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

labored in vain. Two years previously Alessandro Man-
zoni had clearly outlined the programme of the roman-
ticists in a famous letter to the Marquis Cesare d'Azeglio.

Manzoni was born in Milan March 7, 1785, son of the
noble Peter and Giulia, daughter of Cesare Beccaria. In
time he formed his taste upon the Latin and Italian clas-
sics, and among the moderns preferred Parini and Monti
At the age of fifteen he made his first attempt in litera-
ture, imitating Monti in a poem of democratic spirit in
terzine, II trionfo della liberta. In Paris, where he went in
1805 to rejoin his mother, he frequented learned and
elegant society, becoming acquainted with Claude Fau-
riel, a famous man of letters and a student of Italian
affairs, who exerted upon him a strong influence. He
wrote and published there a poem on the death of Carlo
Imbonati, a friend of his mother's, and Urania, a poem
of classic inspiration. Of this period (i 808-10) are his
marriage with Enrichetta Blondel, a Protestant, her con-
version to the Catholic religion, and the consequent repe-
tition of the nuptial ceremony according to our rite, and
the conversion of the poet himself from Voltairianism
to sincere faith, which was to be the guide and light to
every act of his life as man, as citizen and as author.
He returned in 1810 to Milan, and in that city and in
the village of Brusuglio devoted himself to reflection
and to the composition of works in prose and verse that
were to make him famous throughout Europe and cause
him to be hailed by common consent the prince of our
revived literature. He was absorbed in study, but not
so deeply that he could not follow with a watchful and
anxious eye the fate of his country, tremble for her, and
write in her behalf.

He sought neither honors nor offices, and lived mod-
estly, saddened by grave domestic trials, among them
the loss of four daughters; but remaining through all
serene and tranquil. When united Italy became a na-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 319

tion, he was elected to the Senate, and attended at two
memorable sessions: one, February 26, 1861, for the pro-
clamation of the Kingdom of Italy ; the other, December
9, 1864, when he gave his vote for the law transferring
the capital from Turin to Florence, and designating
Rome as the future capital. At eighty years of age he
was still engaged in literary work. The comparative es-
say, The French Revolution of 1789 and the Italian Revolu-
tion of 1859 is of that time, and attests his acumen, his
candor and his love of country. He died May 22, 1873,
amid the universal lamentations of Italians.

With his juvenile writings Manzoni pleased Monti and
Foscolo, but failed to please himself. Soon he saw be-
fore him, bright and clear, the line to follow in art; the
way to arrive had already been pointed out in the poem
on the death of Imbonati:

To keep the hand pure, and the mind;
So much to experience of human things
As may be needful, but not value them;
Ne'er to be servile, ne'er to make a truce
With aught that's vile; ne'er to betray the truth,
Nor ever speak a word that seems applause
For vice or scorn for virtue.

In the letters in which, as already said, he formulated
in 1823 the purposes of the new school, he assigned to
poetry and to literature in general, "the useful for its
purpose, the true for its subject, and the interesting for
its means."

Faithful to this principle, with the inspiration of the
faith reawakened in a pure and fervid heart, he wrote
five sacred hymns: La rcsurresione, II name di Maria, II
naiale, La passione, and La pentecoste, full of lyric fire and
finely elaborated — the last really wonderful; in these he
sought "to bring back to religion those grand, noble
and human sentiments that naturally spring from it."

Almost contemporaneously he was incited to civic and

330 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

patriotic poetry, and the Cinque maggio ("Fifth of May")',
the ode that came from his pen as at one cast, on the
announcement of the death of Napoleon I (1821), sud-
denly made him known throughout Europe; those
strophes, not free from faults, but rapid, vibrant, impet-
uous, and at the same time packed with thought, were
suddenly and are still upon the lips of all. This ode is
related by the nature of the subject to another ode, un-
published till 1848, on the movements of the Piedmontese
in March, 1821, and to the choruses of the tragedies.

Upon the tragedies // conte di Carmagnola and the
Adekhi, Manzoni worked from 1816 to 1822, after reading
Shakespeare and studying the questions that for some
time had been agitated concerning the drama. He left
aside the famous unities, called Aristotelian, of time and
place, and with them every other rule and norm that
was not "founded in the reason of art and kindred
to the nature of the dramatic poem." He wished to
reproduce faithfully what we call the historical and local
color. To this end he studied for the first of his trage-
dies the usages of war and the conditions and. quality
of the captains of soldiers of fortune in the fifteenth
century, to which number Carmagnola belonged. For the
second he studied the events of the last years of the
domination of the Lombards, and the conditions of Italy
under that domination. To the dialogue, the style and
language he gave more simplicity and naturalness than
had been held to be fitting for tragedy. He introduced
the choruses as lyrical expressions of the sentiments ex-
cited in the poet by the action represented. And he
aimed to educate and instruct, as the supreme purpose
of dramatic action. All this he argued and justified in
the prefaces to the two tragedies and in a letter in
French to a Frenchman. The tragedies were accompan-
ied by historic notes, and the second also by a learned
discourse on some point of Lombard history in Italy.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 321

Notwithstanding all this novelty, the Carmagnola and
the Adekhi are not of great value, because the lyric ele-
ment predominates and the action is slight. But they
contain fine passages; and the chorus in the Carmagnola
upon the battle of Maclodio, the two choruses in the
Adelchi — the one upon the victory of Charlemagne and
the other full of exquisite delicacy, upon the death of
Ermengarda — are lyrics whose beauty is familiar to
everyone.

But the work by which Manzoni takes a place among
the greatest writers, not only of Italy but of Europe, is
a historical romance, I prornessi sposi ("The Betrothed"),
written in i82i-*3. In the first edition (1827), the book
was full of words and constructions purely literary,
abounded in inappropriate or affected elegance, and had
also some expressions either erroneous or of dialect.
Dissatisfied with these, the author spent years of study
on it and reduced it to the form in which we have it —
that is, written in simple and natural Tuscan, according
to the forms and constructions of the living Florentine
speech. The revised version was issued in i84o-*2. But
even in the first form the story had been received as an
original and valuable work. Historical romance came
from England, where Sir Walter Scott had given ad-
mired examples of it. But the Milanese writer, with his
profound knowledge of the human heart, with his most
felicitous aptitude for psychologic observation, careful,
quiet, sure, ha« given us something better than an in-
genious story or a lively picture of manners in the style
of the Scottish romance. All "the moral world of a mind
high, gentle and pure" is reflected in this book, so simple
and yet so profound; the analysis of thought is most
subtle, the lucidity of form is perfect. "Walter Scott,"
Chateaubriand wrote, "is great; Manzoni is something
more."

The scene of Manzoni's novel is laid in Lombardy;

21

322 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the time, 1628 to 1631. The general idea came to the
author from Ripamonti's stories; he says it was partic-
ularly suggested by a certain proclamation against the
"bravoes," cited by Melchiorre Gioia in his Economia e
statistica. The plot turns on a most simple incident, the
marriage of two peasants, Renzo and Lucia, which is
opposed by a scoundrelly lordling, Don Rodrigo. In a
setting historically and imaginatively correct, as Gior-
dani says, "the highest truth and the most perfect finish
in dialogue and in characters," is represented a society
profoundly corrupt, in which an arbitrary government is
associated with feudal anarchy and popular anarchy, and
extravagant legislation is joined with "profound and bru-
tal ignorance." This environment is admirably de-
scribed; the imaginary characters seem to live and
breathe; personages of whom history gives us but a
faint outline — as Cardinal Federico Borromeo, 1'Innomin-
ato, and the Nun of Monza — are presented with a full
and perfect impress of their individuality. Among the
imaginary characters, Don Abbondio, Perpetua, Fra
Galdino, and the Azzeccagarbugli ("inciter of tumults")
are among the most popular in our literature ; Fra Cristo-
foro is an incomparable minister of a Providence that
succors and inspires to Christian resignation. Sincere
piety, never superstitious, gives evidence throughout the
romance of the equable and serene spirit of the author.

If we consider how the powerful of the earth are
presented there, and in contrast the humble, the simple
and the poor, few books aside from the Gospel appear
so perfectly democratic as this. "Oh, let it be praised!"
said Giordani; "the impostors and the oppressors per-
ceived afterward (but late) that a vigorous brain, a
powerful arm is his who has taken so much care to ap-
pear simple and almost stupid; but stupid to whom?
To the impostors and the oppressors." The good-hum-
ored simplicity to which Giordani alludes is only one

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 323

of the elements of Manzoni's subtle humor. In choosing
a subject like this and using in it, instead of conventional
and academic phrasing, the familiar speech of Tuscany,
Manzoni conformed to the opinion that he and the other
Italian romancers held, that literary works should take
hold of subjects not alien to modern life, and such as
may attract and at the same time pleasantly educate
the greatest possible number of readers.

After giving to Italy this romance, the reasons for
whose great fame we have been able to indicate only in
part, Manzoni wrote a disquisition on historical ro-
mance, and in general on compositions of mingled his-
tory and invention, in which he condemned with subtle
logic and unbiased intuition this hybrid class — which is
in fact abandoned to-day by nearly all. In criticism and
in historical erudition he gave evidence of his acumen
and of his practical mind ; and he left most judicious ob-
servations upon questions concerning the Italian lan-
guage. The Colonna infame ("column of infamy"), written
in 1840, is a learned disquisition, historico-judicial, con-
cerning a famous trial of two persons condemned as
untori during the pestilence of 1630. [Untori were per-
sons supposed to scatter the germs of pestilence.] The
Morak cattolica (1819), in which are admired "the strength
of conviction, the subtlety of the argument, and the
warmth of the style," is a confutation, as urbane as
learned and sincere, of a judgment concerning this mo-
rale given by Sismondi in his History of the Italian Re-
publics.

Among classicists and romanticists Leopardi forms "a
party by himself." Though classic in form, he is ro-
mantic in matter — by his frank subjectivity, by his gentle
melancholy, by the fervid invocations to the moon, by
his often symbolic conceptions of nature. Thanks to
him, Italy, which had at one time transmuted the farrago
of exotic romantic legends into the classic form which

324 FRANCESCO PLAMINI

is all its own, now gave the plastic serenity of Greek
and Latin form to modern pathos, the romantic senti-
ment of northern Europe.

Giacomo Leopardi was born at Recanati June 29, 1798.
He was the son of Count Monaldo, a gentleman of react-
ionary principles but a lover of study, and of Adelaide,
his wife, a woman coldly austere, who in 1803 assumed
the administration of her husband's patrimony and suc-
ceeded by many years of economy in restoring it. Pre-
cocious and self-taught, gifted with marvelous mental
power, Giacomo early gave evidence of his singular gen-
ius. His intellect dominated the psychic faculties; but
his feelings too were exuberant and his heart open to
every affection before the conviction of the infinite van-
ity of everything had done violence to his nature. In
the gloomy silence of his father's library, in the solitude
of the little chamber where his youth unfolded, tLe de-
sire of loving assailed him often, acute and intense; an
exquisite sensitiveness was united to the wonderful clear-
ness of his intellect.

From his tenth to his twentieth year he devoted him-
self with quiet constancy to the study of classic philol-
ogy. The praise of a few, principally Giordani, was
enough to make him desire no end to his labor but in
the sure haven of glory. And with glory more deceptive
mirages allured him; in the claustral prison of his
father's house, to which he was condemned by his par-
ents, who were fearful of seeing him estranged from
the love of God in the midst of the world, his heart ex-
panded with vague aspirations, to nature, to country, to
woman, to the infinite life, — the true life outside the
"wild native place" — into the wide world. Of this period
is the Passero solitario ("Solitary Sparrow"), a melancholy
idyl full of affection for nature; and of the same period
is the canzone to Italy:

0 patrla mia, vcdo le mura e gtt arche,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 325

in which he ventures to re-compose the song of Simon-
ides, the poet of Leonidas and the three hundred. This
canzone is indeed somewhat artificial, and one feels the
school in it ; but "the school," said Luigi Settembini, "as
opposed to the world; that opposition which was then
our true life and the life of Italy." The poet was in-
spired not only by the past, but by the sad present, in
this and the sister canzone on the monument of Dante.
That which in one is confused vision, though living and
terrible*—

"A tumult of soldiers and horses,

And smoke and dust and flashing swords,

Like lightning 'mid the clouds" —

becomes in the other a connected story and a picture of
the miserable campaign in Russia; and the tale turns
into an apostrophe to the Italian dead "along the gloomy
Gallic shores."

But soon the idyllic and patriotic poet becomes the
poet of sorrow; to faith and aspiration succeed doubt and
dejection. Having ruined himself, as he writes, with
seven years of furious, desperate study in the formative
time when he should have been strengthening his consti-
tution, Leopardi becomes aware that his health is irre-
deemably lost, and with terror and trembling he sees
that his body is growing miserably deformed. It was
apparently cerebro-spinal neurasthenia; and the terrible
malady tore from his eyes the band of roseate illusions,
and, looking about him in bewilderment, he saw nothing
but a desert. His father was severe, incapable of under-
standing him ; his mother was destitute of that maternal
tenderness which would have eased the wounds of his
heart; in his miserable little gossiping town were faces
hostile or mocking ; at twenty years the flower of youth
faded in him, who hated old age like the Greek poet
Mimnermus. And how many other ruins in his soul!

326 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

Of religion, first of all, the supreme consoler; then, to
use his own words, "the imagination and the faculties
of the heart, even these, were nearly spent with the
vigor of the body." No more for his active intellect the
assiduous studies; no more for his heart overflowing
with affection the hope of being loved again. In this so
great solitude Leopardi withdraws into himself ; his soul
speaks to him in a voice of lament, and the voice seems
to him "the jplaint of things." So his sorrow mirrors
itself in universal sorrow, and he takes a place amid the
host of singers in Europe of the Weltschmerz ("world-
sorrow") ; was supreme among them, as Schopenhauer
judged, because he reflected more sincerely the color of
his own soul in the expression of the heart-sorrow of
the world.

Nevertheless, in this second period of his life, about
1820-29, the poet does not lose his energy; he is sustained
by the inward dissidence — the fervid heart rebelling
against the mind that seeks the naked truth. The un-
fortunate knows well that no woman will ever care to
receive his love; but not the less for that does the pure
flame enkindle, nor does he less indulge in the ecstatic
contemplation of beauty. In a poem of the seventeenth
century, The Conquest of Granada, by Graziani, he meets
with two romantic names, Elvira and Consalvo, in an
episode that strikes him — the first and last kiss of a girl
to a dying cavalier. To die in the kiss breathed from
the woman he adores is a supreme joy that even a youth
deformed and ill, if he cannot hope for, can at least
imagine for a moment, without hearing the scornful cry
of reason within him ! Leopardi has expressed it in his
Consalvo with lines that cannot be read without a shiver
of emotion. Similarly in the Ultima canto di Saffo (1822),
one of the loftiest and most perfect of modern lyrics,
one feels the convulsion of the soul fitted for love, yet tied
to a body from which everything beautiful takes flight.

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 327

The contrast and the anguished realization of the con-
trast, present in all Leopardi's poetry, are especially
manifest in the poems of this period. In the canzone
Alia sua donna ("To His Lady"), of 1823, the poet, as if
terrified by the tremendous truth pronounced in the
Last Sang of Sappho, takes refuge in the ideal, and pur-
sues, as he says, "one of those phantoms of celestial and
ineffable beauty and virtue that come to us often in
sleep and in ^jigilsjivhen we are little more than children,
and afterward at rare times in sleep or in an almost
alienation of mind when we are youths." It is liberty,
it is happiness, say the critics ; but the poet himself says,
"It is the woman that is not found" — not the "eternal
feminine" of Goethe, but something more pure and incor-
poreal, the sister soul femininely gentle and sweet, which
reflects into ours its own divine image through the
mantle of matter, diaphanous to it — however it may ap-
pear to earthly eyes — as a cup of clearest crystal.

As we have seen, though so much was destroyed for
Leopardi, his imagination remained ardent. To fancy,
and in fancy to lose himself in limitless spaces, was the
supreme luxury for him, as for Rousseau. In the Infinite,
a very brief but beautiful lyric, a hedge shuts off from
the poet the greater part of the horizon; but through
the hindrance to the sight, the potent fancy so strongly
works that "for a little the heart does not fear." And,
indulging his imagination, Leopardi at this time fell in
love with other ideals, as for the redemption of his coun-
try, no longer by fighting and martyrdom, which his rea-
son showed him to be vain, but by the regeneration of
her sons, earnest of more fruitful battles. Thus to the
patriotic poet of the first two canzone succeeds the civic
poet in the ode A tin I'incitore net pallone, encouraging the
new generation of Italy to that virtue, he aims to free
the mind from the disastrous forgetfulness of country.
In the canzone to his friend Angelo Mai, the poet tries

328 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

to sweep away the obscurity of tedium that encumbers
his "dead century," by shaking the sleeping minds with
memories of their hereditary glory. The epithalamium
Per le nosse delta sorella Paolina ("For the Marriage of my
Sister Pauline"), by reason of this sad feeling of the
miseries of Italy, has a tone of elegy. To re-temper the
Italians for the trials to come, was, even amid his pessim-
ism, the persistent hope of Leopardi.

The ardent love for nature had not slept in the poet's
mind through those years of superstitious illusions; in
the song Alia Primavera ("To the Spring") he repeats the
ancient dream of a nature "living and animated, passion-
ate and thoughtful," as pagan mythology represents it;
in the Inno ai Patriarchi ("Hymn to the Patriarchs") he
evokes again from the Bible the fancy of the primal
happy age in which the race of men lived in ignorance
of its afflictions and of its destiny. Some have denied
the sincerity and actuality of the loxs_fornature in Leo-
pardi; but they are proved by the grand~rurat pictures
in the Vita soliiaria, the Quiete dopo la tempesta, and the
Sakato^Se^mjlaggio. His descriptions are, indeed, hasty
and infrequent, and he gives attention rather to the ge-
neric than to the specific aspects of nature ; but at times
a few statuesque outlines may have greater effect than
minute description.

About 1829 Leopardi began the third, most unhappy
period of his life. "Dark lover of death," as De Musset
called him, he now denies and despairs. He had in vain
changed . places, as a sick man changes sides — Rome,
Milan, Bologna, Florence, Pisa having successively re-
ceived him; everywhere he carried with him an execu-
tioner in his undone and suffering body. Therefore now
he would and would not; he raised himself for a time
from torpor only to sink back again, in the Hamlet-like
mood where he meditated continually on the vanity of all
things, and the relief of his favorite studies often failed

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 329

him by reason of the weakness of his eyes. Suffering
marvel of misfortune nobly supported — in view of this,
let us not be repelled by any weaknesses or inconsisten-
cies in this great man; it is enough that he endured
such sorrows without losing his reason. For now every-
thing seems to him black and maleficent; the ameni
errori are gone, and he lies uncaring, inactive, smiling
bitterly at the undisguised truth. The beauty of woman
no longer throws a gleam of divine light upon his path;
she is too far inferior to the ideal in his enamored soul.
What he says of woman in Aspasia corresponds to that
upon the redemption of his country, for which he had
so greatly hoped, in the Paralipomeni delta Batra-comio-
machia ("Further Chronicles of the Battle of the Frogs
and Mice"), a heroi-satiric poem in octaves, in which as
a continuation and completion of the pseudo-Homeric
poem, which he had translated in sextets, he represents
the Italians as the mice and their oppressors, the Aus-
trians, as the frogs. In all this pessimistic poetry the
sarcasm is a sob.

Thus, Leopardi's soul being frozen in the chill of that
limitless tedium, and his rebellious heart at length over-
come, his intellect, pursuing unlovely truth with cruel
pertinacity, reigned supreme. And the later poems are
wholly philosophic, with the exception of the Ricordanze
("Recollections"), where sentiment intrudes through the
paths of memory into the domain of thought. In the
Canto dijm pastore errante nell' AsiaC^Song of a Wander-
ing Shepherd in Asia77) isTall his pessimistic theory of
the uselessness of life; and in the Ginestra ("Broom, or
golden furze^), the flower of the desert, lost on the arid
ridge of Vesuvius the destroyer, gives occasion for fu-
nereal reflections summing up his theory of despair.
Death, so many times invoked, sighed for and blessed,
came to him June 14, 1837, at Naples, where he had

330 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

been living since October, 1833, with his friend Antonio
Ranieri.

Leopardi left many writings in Latin and Italian,
philologic and scholarly, especially on the Greek writers
of the decadence, and good classic translations. He was
a most original writer of prose. In his Operette morali
("Short Studies on Morals") and in the Pensieri
("Thoughts"), and in some volgarizzamenti ("transla-
tions"), the language is pure, the style simple and clean
and the reasoning candid, here and there reminding of
Lucian in its subtlety. Despairing pessimism pervades
it; one would say the author enjoys, as Giordani wrote
in 1825, "to be always uncovering and putting his hand
upon the miseries of men and things, and speculating
with cold shuddering on the unhappy and terrible secrets
of the life of the universe." There are imaginary dia-
logues, allegories, fables, considerations upon the life
of animals — the Elogio degli Uccelli ("Eulogy of the
Birds") is most beautiful — philosophical in content,
worthy to be read and carefully considered. But the
author lives in his poems, into which he has written his
soul. Some of his lyrics — A Silvia, Amore e niorte, and
others — once read are stamped indelibly upon the mem-
ory. In originality his poetry is great even in com-
parison with that of other nations; for neither Byron,
nor Shelley, nor Lenau, nor any other poet of sorrow
has excelled him; but it is of the greatest in Italy. Af-
ter Petrarch, whom he held dear, and whose work he
elucidated with judicious annotations, no other poet ap-
proaches him except Foscolo, and he only in the Sepolcri.
A poet wholly subjective, resolutely averse to imita-
tion from his youth, is such a wonder among us, servile
in our art for centuries by reason of a misunderstood
classicism, that this alone would be cause enough for
giving glory to Leopardi. But there is more than this;
his poetry, though woven of memories and dreams, has

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 331

wonderful concreteness ; in his grand simplicity he is
sculpturesque, and says things beautiful in themselves
and for themselves alone, without extrinsic adornment.

Giacomo Leopardi, dead to faith and shut up in his
sorrow, could not lend his ear to the sound of brand-
ished arms that came up from the shadow where con-
spiracies were made — those conspiracies that seemed to
him, anxious as he was to see Italy fighting upon the
open field in the light of the sun, folly "more fit for
laughter than for compassion."

But from 1830 to 1860 Italian literature aided materi-
ally the work of those courageous spirits who were
preparing the way, in torture and exile, for the redemp-
tion of Italy. Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854), of Vasto
in the Abruzzi, was the popular poet of the Neapolitan,
revolution of 1820; he wrote songs inspired by fervid
love of his country and of liberty, and died, blind and an
exile, in England. Pietro Giannone (1792-1872), of
Camposanto near Modena, but of a Neapolitan family —
not to be confounded with the historian of the same
name already mentioned — conspired and suffered for
Italy. In a political poem, I'Esule ("The Exiled") writ-
ten in 1829, he represented the secret society of the Car-
bonari, and poured out his hatred for the oppressors.
And Poerio and Mameli died fighting heroically for
their country, one at the defense of Venice in 1848, the
other, only twenty-two years of age, in the defense of
Rome in 1849. Alessandro Poerio, of a Neapolitan fam-
ily of patriots, put into his verses the same ardent love
for Italy that he showed while the surgeon was am-
putating his leg, twice wounded at Mestre, October 27,
1848, when, as we read in the orders of the day of Gen-
eral Pepe, he talked of the country calmly, serenely,
"with the same affection that Plutarch's heroes would
have used in speaking of Athens or Sparta." Goffredo
Mameli, of Genoa, the strong and gentle bard of our

332 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

people, impetuous in song as in battle, named one of
his celebrated poems from Mazzini's formula, Dio e
popolo; and in the popular hymn,

Fratelli d'ltalia, I'ltalia s'e desta,

full of enthusiasm and of fire, he urged the soldiers of
his country to victory. Beside this hymn should be
placed another, not less famous:

Si scopron le tombe, si levcwo i morti.

This was called "Garibaldi's Hymn," from the use of
the words and music by the soldiers of the hero of Ca-
prera in the battles for the independence and unity of
Italy. Its author was Luigi Mercantini (1821-1872), of
Ripatransone in the Marches, who sang in easy popular
form of the events and the men most conspicuous in the
national Risorgimento from 1848 to 1870.

Giovanni Prati (1815-1884) was born at Dasindo, a
mountain village of the Trentino, on the banks of the
Sarca. He became famous before he was twenty-eight,
by the great popularity of his Edmcnegarda, a novel in
blank verse on a romantic theme, contemporaneous, of
mingled sentimentality and realism, of the ideal and the
commonplace, pleasing by the rapid and vigorous delin-
eation of passions and of characters frankly human.
Prati's juvenile patriotic songs, burning with hatred for
the foreigner, were widely circulated and fired the souls
of patriotic Italians. But this poet appears again among
the masters of lyric poetry during the early years of
the restored unity of Italy. Here are to be mentioned
two others from the valley of the Trent: Antonio Gaz-
zoletti (1813-1866), author of lyrics and of a Christian
tragedy, "St. Paul," who was an ardent patriot in art
and in life; and Andrea Maffei (1798-1885), from Riva
di Trento, less noted for his original poetry than for his
elegant and in general quite free versions of Schiller's

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 333

dramas, Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's masterpieces,
and many foreign gems, mostly from German and from
English. Maffei is perhaps the most famous of the
translators of this period, of whom there were many of
ability.

Among these translators the following may be named
with Maffei: Tommaso Gargallo, of Syracuse, translator
of Horace and Juvenal; Francesco Cassi, of Pesaro, re-
viser rather than translator of Lucan; Luigi Biondi, a
Roman, who made an elegant version of Tibullus; Giu-
seppe De Spuches, of Palermo, who translated Euripides
—the author also of lyrics and two romantic poems,
Gualtiero and Adele di Borgogna, whose wife, Giuseppina
Turrisi Colonna, a writer of poetry, a classical scholar,
and an admirer of Byron, died in 1848 at the age of
twenty-six; Felice Bellotti, of Milan, who gave an Ital-
ian dress to the three great tragedians of Greece and to
Camoens ; Giuseppe Borghi, of Bibbiena, author of most
admirable Inni sacri ("Sacred Hymns") in imitation of
Manzoni, who rendered into our idiom with too great
freedom the odes of Pindar; the Brescians Giovita Scal-
vini and Giuseppe Nicolini, — the last-named also a lyric
poet and author of the instructive Cultivazione dei cedri,
who translated, the one from Goethe, the other from
Byron and Shakespeare; and, finally, Luigi Goracci, of
Foiano di Valdichiana, who may be said to have sur-
passed all previous translators of Ovid with his version
of the Metamorphoses in octaves like those of Ariosto.

The theories of romanticism, of which Manzoni was
now universally recognized as the prophet and standard-
bearer, were put into effect in lyrics by Torti, Biava,
Carrer, Grossi, Sestini, and Carcano. Torti (1774-1852),
of Milan, disciple of Parini and author of a poetic epistle
on the Sepolcri of Foscolo and of Pindelmonte, having
been converted to romanticism, was a friend of Man-
zoni's, who in I Promessi Sposi called his verses "few but

334 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

excellent," and wrote according to the new standards of
art a novel in octaves La Torre di Capua (1829), a poem,
on scepticism and religion, and some other things which,
in truth, do not rise above mediocrity. To Samuele
Biava (1792-1870), of Bergamo, we owe melodie liriche,
mystic and sentimental, imperfect in form, but ardent in
sentiment. The Venetian Luigi Carrer (1801-1850) at
first cultivated extemporaneous poetry, attracted by the
example of the celebrated improvisator Tommaso Sgricci,
but later wrote reflective poetry like Foscolo's in the Inno
alia terra ("Hymn to the Earth") and sonnets, and in
the manner of the romanticists in romances or ballads.
Besides his various lyrics, short poems and tragedies, in
which is revealed a richness of poetic fancy, much study
and a sense of proportion like Manzoni's, he left crit-
icisms and works of literary erudition,

Tommaso Grossi (1791-1853), of Bellano, an intimate
friend of Manzoni's, lives to-day as a poet almost ex-
clusively by his romantic novels in octaves — simple, im-
passioned and affecting — La fuggitiva, I'lldegonda, and
Ulrica e Lida, which, together with La Pia de' Tolomei
(1822), by the Tuscan Bartolomeo Sestini, are the best
novels of the kind, moving the reader to tears and sighs,
especially I'lldegonda (1820), which carrying us into full
mediaeval times, was in most perfect harmony with the
romantic spirit of the age. Finally, Giulio Carcano
(1812-1884), of Milan, imitated Grossi in a novel on a
pathetic subject, Ida dclla Torre ("Ida of the Tower"),
and translated Shakespeare into verse.

Among writers in dialect was Grossi, who wrote a
satire, the Prineide, in Milanese, and a poem on the death
of Porta. Carlo Porta (1776-1821) used his Milanese
dialect in patriotic satires, and employed his caustic wit,
under an appearance of ingenuousness, to represent the
miseries of an enslaved people. He had singular quali-
ties of genius and of soul, such as were shown neither

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 335

by Giovanni Meli (1740-1815) of Palermo, who wrote
lyrics fine and melodious, but Arcadian in content, in
the Sicilian dialect, modified to literary form, nor by
Pietro Buratti (1772-1832), of Venice, who used the ver-
nacular of the lagoons masterfully to deride the customs
of his city for the sake of deriding, rather than to cor-
rect them by the derision. Contemporaneously with
Porta flourished two other famous dialect poets — Giu-
seppe Gioacchino Belli (1791-1863), productive author
of Sonctti romancschi, in which the life of Rome from
1828 to 1849 is faithfully and comically represented, in
the piazza and in the sacristy, in the tavern and in the
palace; and Angelo Brofferio (1802-1866), celebrated for
his popular cansoni in the Piedmontese dialect no less
than for numerous dramas in the literary language, for
his histories of Piedmont and of the Subalpine Parlia-
ment, for his work as a journalist, and as a deputy. But
Porta is the most vigorously realistic among our dia-
lect writers of every age ; though the author of Ildegonda
approaches him in certain respects.

To Grossi we owe, further, a poem in octaves, / Lom-
bardi alia prinia crociata ("The Lombards in the First Cru-
sade"), which is not lacking in some affecting scenes
and some fine description, but disappoints the great ex-
pectations it raises, and seems poor in inspiration, and
careless in style and versification. He tried unsuccess-
fully to emulate Tasso in the use of romanticism in
epic form ; this class of poem, indeed, had now exhausted
its vital force; for only mediocre are those that were
written late in the eighteenth century and early in the
nineteenth; among them are Teresa Bandettini's La
Testicle, Pietro Bagnoli's Orlando savio and Cadmo, Lo-
renzo Costa's Colombo, and Angelo Maria Ricci's Italiade
and San Benedetto.

An allegorical poem in the manner of Dante, the Scala
di Vita ("Ladder of Life"), disappointed in his hope of

336 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

glory Luigi Grisostomo Ferrucci, a kinsman of the more
celebrated Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci, scholar, wri-
ter and poet. The romance rather than the poem was
the medium preferred for narrations partly historical and
partly imaginary. After the splendid example by Man-
zoni, historical romances were written by Giovanni Ro-
sini of Lusignano (1776-1855), Professor at the Universi-
ty of Pisa, who, always with a great show of erudition,
developed in the Monaco di Monza the famous episode of
the Proniessi Sposi and wrote Luisa Strozzi and Ugolino
della Gherardesca; also by Grossi, who in the Marco Vis-
conti suggested gracefully his friend's masterpiece, and
was not far behind as to subtlety of psychologic anal-
ysis and wise simplicity of style; by Carcano, who in
Angiola Maria and Damiano followed the footsteps of
Manzoni, leaving out, however, the historic element al-
most entirely and giving special development to the af-
fecting or sentimental parts ; and by D'Azeglio and Cantu.
Massimo d'Azeglio (1798-1866), son-in-law and, as he
may well be called, disciple of Manzoni, was a gentleman
of Turin, who devoted his life to art and to politics, as
painter, writer, patriot and statesman. In the Ettore
Fieramosca (1833), a historical romance inspired by a pic-
ture that he painted of the tournament of Barletta, he
aimed to keep awake the sentiment of national honor ; in
it are pages of eloquence and appropriate imagery that
make us willing to overlook the defects that are not
wanting in the plot and the drawing of characters. In
the Niccolb de' Lapi (1841), D'Azeglio glorifies the love
of country and of liberty, grouping around an imaginary
type of noble villager, a follower of Savonarola, the
events of the memorable siege of Florence in 1530. By
these romances and some political pamphlets — Gli ultimi
cast di Romagna, I lutti di Lombardia — he contributed not
a little to encourage those spirits that led the Italians to
national redemption. He contributed still more after-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 337

ward, with his arm and his wisdom, as soldier, deputy,
ambassador, minister, and president of the Consiglio.

Cesare Cantu (1805-1895), of Brivio, a voluminous wri-
ter in many classes of literature, was the author of vig-
orous works, such as the Universal History, which, neces-
sarily written in haste, does not correspond in accuracy
of detail to the vastness of design. He is noted as a
romancer by his Margfierita Pustcrla (1838), in which,
nevertheless, are many defects of conception and execu-
tion. From the moment when the Italian Revolution as-
sumed by the force of events a tendency adverse to the
Papacy, Cantu was no longer in its favor; yet he was
far from adopting the reactionary principles and anti-na-
tional sentiments that the Jesuit Antonio Bresciani d'Ala
(died in 1862) proclaimed with violence in his romances,
set in a historical frame in a style florid, archaic and
affected.

The opposite of Bresciani was Francesco Domenico
Guerrazzi (1804-1873), of Leghorn, a romancer, but
wholly independent of the school of Manzoni, a man of
bold spirit, indomitable character, and exuberant and
intemperate fancy. His literary works in highly colored
style, fantastic, often inflated, reflect his mind and are
at the same time calls to war. Thus the Battaglia di
Bcnevento (1827), in which is represented dramatically
the fall of the Swabian dynasty oppressed by Guelph-
ism, has passages of powerful effect, although it is
wearying by the continuous parade of vigor and origin-
ality. In the Asscdio di Firenze (1836), the last battle
for Florentine liberty against the arms of the Papacy
and the Empire joined for its overthrow, an event that
inspired D'Azeglio, is drawn by a mind raging with
patriotism, whose violent leaps and plunges are mir-
rored in the style. He was imprisoned in 1848, then
elected successively deputy, minister with Montanelli
and with Mazzini, and lastly dictator, but in 1849 he
23

338 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

fled with difficulty from the fury of the populace and
was taken, tried and condemned to imprisonment, a sen-
tence commuted to exile in Corsica. In exile and after-
ward he wrote other romances even more fiery and
stirring — Beatrice Ccnci, Pasquale Paoli, and others. In
1857 he escaped and went to Genoa; after 1859 he held
for several years a seat in the national Parliament, where
he opposed fiercely what he called the "impious faction"
of the moderates. At last, weary of public life, he with-
drew and lived in retirement at his villa near Cecina.

Not all the writings of Guerrazzi have the same
Byronic style. La Serpicina ("The Little Serpent"), in
which he affects to prove the inferiority of man in com-
parison with the beasts, is a graceful little thing; in the
Biico net Muro ("Hole in the Wall") he writes of him-
self and of domestic events in an agreeable manner. He
has been well described as a singular contrast of good
and of censurable both as a man and a writer, but always
original; and in irony, sarcasm, invectives — in his rages,
when he could hold himself under some restraint — he
was more vigorous than any writer among his contempo-
raries.

Another Tuscan of about the same time resembled him
in his "patriotic and civic aims, but was quite different
in the temper of his mind, which was serene and equa-
ble— Giambattista Niccolini (1782-1861), of San Giuliano
near Pisa, was an able writer of historic drama, in which
he followed the method of the romanticists. In Nabucco
("Nebuchadnezzar") he developed a transparent political
allegory. In Antonio Foscarini he drew a picture, vivid
but not true to historic fact, of the conditions in Venice
in the seventeenth century, with the purpose of calling
attention to similar conditions existing in his own time
in Italy. During the first period of his literary activity
he had been a classical dramatist: in the second he
joined with the imitation of Greek tragedy that of

Shakespeare, Schiller and Byron. Among his dramas the
Arnaldo da Brescia (1843) takes ths first place for origin-
ality and importance ; in this the hero, the Brescian friar,
embodies the popular conscience declaring its rights in
the face of the Papacy and the Empire. It may be called
a dramatic epos rather than a tragedy, many of its pas-
sages are eloquent with the sincere ardor of the senti-
ments that are the life of it.

Satire as well was used at this time to expose and
denounce the misfortunes of Italy, subject to the for-
eigner, overtaxed and oppressed. What Porta did in
Milanese, Giuseppe Giusti, born in 1809 at Monsummano
in the Val di Nievole, did in the literary language, and
therefore with the capacity for wider and more effective
moral influence.

Before him Filippo Pananti (1766-1837), of Mugello,
imitating and often directly translating foreign models,
wrote in sestine // poeta di teatro ("The Dramatic Poet")
and numerous epigrams without any serious purpose.
Antonio Guadagnoli (1798-1858), of Arezzo, wrote some
pleasantly facetious and frivolous things after the man-
ner of the seventeenth and eighteenth century writers.
And Arnaldo Fusinato (1817-1888), of Schio, contented
himself in his humorous poetry with laughing and excit-
ing laughter; but he wrote some patriotic songs and ro-
mantic poems not wanting in sentiment — Suor Estella
("Sister Estelle"), Le due madri ("The Two Mothers"),
and others, which became very popular.

But Giusti, on the contrary, made use of humorous
poetry as a weapon against the oppressors of his coun-
try. Having studied law against his inclinations, at
Pisa, where he did more to wear out the benches of
the noted cafe of Ussero than those of the Sapienza, he
took his degree, and then devoted himself to poetry
rather than to the practice of law, for the most part at
Florence and at Pescia. In 1843 he entered into corre-

340 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

spondence with Manzoni, and in 1845 visited him at
Milan, where he knew also Grossi, Torti and others.
After being a member of the legislative assembly of Tus-
cany in the time of the Constitutional Government of
the province (1848-9), he died at Florence in the house
of Gino Capponi, where he was a guest, March 31, 1850.
Giusti's poetical satires, splendidly original in irony as
well as invective, are written in a Tuscan nearer to the
common speech than to the literary language ; hence they
have unusual vigor of style, from the perfect correspond-
ence, the exact shading of the word to the thought ; and
an unusual musical effect is attained by the care given
to the meters, now solemn and grave, now swift and
flexible. They had, therefore, in the author's time, ex-
traordinary circulation and popularity, and editions were
rapidly multiplied. Doubtless this was in part due to
their civic and political content, since much in them
was connected with the special conditions of Giusti's
times. But, fortunately for us, not a little is applicable
to human nature in any age or country; for example,
what he says of popular education and the rights of
human reason, and his denunciations of demagogues, im-
postors, and robbers of the public revenues. Therefore
Giusti's poems are still read with pleasure ; and some, as
// brindisi di Girella ("The Toast to Girella"), // re travi-
cello ("King Rafter" — expression for a nonentity, like
"King Log"), La terra dei Morti ("The Land of the
Dead"), Sant' Ambrogio, and others, seem even to us
humorously acute or fiercely sarcastic. He has the art
of broadening his subject as he goes on; he can mirror
with perfect concreteness, without tricks or artifices, the
objective reality; he discerns intimate relations among
things that escape the superficial observer ; he hides cun-
ningly the work of the file, so that one would never per-
ceive that his apparent facility and his polish are the
result of labor. The proper names of some of his char-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 341

acters have become common names in a way ; as Girella,
Becero and that Gingillino to whom the author with
much of Parini's "instructive irony," teaches how to get
an office from the government, and many phrases and
sentences that are now common property made their
first appearance in Giusti's satirical poems. He wrote
also serious lyrics, deservedly praised for delicacy and
melancholy sweetness, like the famous sonnet, La fidncia
in Dio ("Confidence in God"). As to his Epistolario, once
much admired, it is observed by Ferdinando Martini —
to whom we owe Memoric of Giusti, brief and incomplete,
but not without value — that "instead of the academic
in the toga, they have the academic in the vernacola;
but academic it is; the art does not succeed in hiding
the artifice, and the excessive polish does not give point
to the style, but blunts it."

In the years of our national Risorgimento, political
writings engaged the attention and the activity of many
men of fine ability; and history and philosophy were
to be potent instruments in the struggle. Carlo Troya
(1784-1858), a Neapolitan of neo-Guelph ideas, but a pa-
triot, returning to the methods of Muratori, wrote a His-
tory of Italy in the Middle Ages, strong and rich in eru-
dition. Mazzini and Cattaneo had opposing political
ideas. The full discussion of the work of Giuseppe Maz-
zini (1805-1872), of Genoa, the great agitator and pa-
triot, belongs mainly to political history; but literary
history cannot pass him by, since he was an acute and
appreciative critic in matters pertaining to poetry, fine
arts and music, was modern in his ideas, and master of
a style lively and all his own, a romanticist, but writing
with classic correctness.

Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869), of Milan, was another of
the men of thought and action by whom our Risorgi-
mento is honored. But among them the most prolific and
active, after Mazzini, was Vincenzo Gioberti (1801-1852),

342 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

of Turin, a philosopher of great fame and an eloquent
political writer. In his Primato morale e civile degli Ital-
iani (1843) he exalted Italy and Catholicism together,
proposing a confederation of the various States under
the presidency of the Pontiff, and exciting great and
general enthusiasm. This idea he developed later more
fully in the Prokgotmni al Primato and in the Gesuita
moderno, designed to strike the Jesuits. He returned to
Turin after many years of exile, was received with pub-
lic rejoicing, and was elected Minister and afterward
President of the Council. But after the reverse of No-
vara he changed his ideas; and in the Rinnovamento
civile d' Italia (1851), casting aside the proposition of the
Primate, he maintained, with acumen and prevision, that
Piedmont ought to undertake the political redemption of
Italy; that all sections ought to second it; and that the
Pope ought to have the "sovereignty of neither state
nor territory."

Of Gioberti as a philosopher it is not in our province
to speak. Yet we shall make mention of Pasquale Gallup-
pi (1770-1846), of Tropea, and Antonio Rosmini (1797-
^SS), of Roveredo, who rose to merited renown in spec-
ulative studies; of Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-
l835), of Salsomaggiore, and of Melchiorre Gioia (1767-
1829), of Piacenza, who continued worthily the tradi-
tions of the jurisconsults and economists of the eight-
eenth century; of Giuseppe Ferrari (1811-1876), of
Milan, a disciple of Romagnosi, who approached the
method and sometimes the ideas of Vico in his writings
on the philosophy of history, particularly in the Teoria
dci periodi politici, intended to show the inevitable periodic
repetition of determined historic movements ; of Raff aello
Lambruschini (1788-1873), of Genoa, most expert in
agronomics and in economic and pedagogic science.

But Terenzio Mamiani della Rovere (1799-1885), of
Pesaro, an illustrious philosopher and statesman, who,

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 343

after political struggles and exile, rose to the highest
honors of public life, was in addition an orator and a
writer of literary prose and of tales, fables and narratives.
To him we owe idyls that depart from the common-
places of the bucolic, singing the great and simple beau-
ties of nature, and sacred hymns on the lives of saints,
in beautiful blank verse.

Another poet, singular by novelty of conception and
form, by fine art and ardent sentiment, was Niccolo
Tommaseo (1802-1874), of Sebenico in Dalmatia, a wri-
ter of varied literature and an admirable controversialist,
a successful seeker after popular songs, legends and folk-
lore, a romancer, a critic harsh and savage but acute,
and an able lexicologist. A rich philosophy and a treas-
ury of subtle observations are enclosed in his multiform
and varied writings. He is constant in his desire for
the moral and civil improvement of the Italians. Still,
there is not lacking intemperance in judgments, some-
times extending to malignity, as in his criticisms of Leo-
pardi, and opinions savoring of paradox.

Among the other prose writers of the time of our polit-
ical resurrection, the following are the most prominent:
D'Azeglio, with / miei ricordi ("My Recollections"), writ-
ten in light and attractive form with intent to educate;
Maurizio Bufalini (1787-1875), of Cesena, physician and
writer, by his Ricordi, sincere and effective; Giovanni
Dupre (1817-1882), of Siena, a celebrated sculptor, who
wrote Pcnsieri suit' artc e ricordi autubiografici, useful and
well written; and Ippolito Nievo (1831-1861), of Padua,
a poet and brave Garibaldian, lost at thirty in a ship-
wreck, author of the Confcssioni di un ottuagenario, cov-
ering a long period of the life of Italy with historic truth
and artistic style.

Others not to be omitted are : "the last of the purists,"
Ferdinando Ranalli (1813-94), °f the Abruzzo, noted es-
pecially for his Ammacstramcnti di letteratura, written in

344 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the purest style of the cinquecento; and the Marquis
Gino Capponi, of Florence (1792-1876), a litterateur and
a generous and judicious Maecenas to men of letters, who
wrote in irreproachable style upon various subjects —
historical, political, pedagogic, philologic — and left not
only a most important and copious epistolario, but a
well considered and well written history of the Republic
of Florence. Gian Pietro Vieusseux, who was born at
Oneglia, the son of a Genevan, founded reading-rooms in
Florence, a journal, the Antologia, and later the Archivio
of Italian History, still existing. Thanks to him and to
Capponi, Tuscany became at the middle of the century a
tranquil and industrious center of literary studies and
historic research, leading to the general revival of these
studies at the present day. Atto Vannucci (1810-1883)
was born and lived in Tuscany, a man of noble mind and
austere habits, and a writer simple, sincere, vigorous, to
whom we owe a history of ancient Italy and other use-
ful books.

The study of history flourished throughout Italy at
this time. It is sufficient to record the following: the
history of Sardinia, by Giuseppe Manno d'Alghero, author
also of some little literary works of value as the Delia
fortuna delle parole; the histories of the Monarchy of
Savoy, by Luigi Cibrario, of Turin, and Ercole Ricotti,
of Voghera, both noted for other works of the same
class ; the political and economic writings, stimulating to
thought and finely elaborated in form, of the Milanese
Cesare Correnti, who, after conspiring and combating,
sat in the Subalpine Parliament and was a minister of
the new kingdom and a high dignitary of state ; the His-
tory of Italy Told to the Italian People and the History of
Italy from 1815 to 1850, by Giuseppe La Farina, of Mes-
sina, a Mazzinian and afterward a follower and valuable
cooperator of Cavour; the History of Histories by the
Brescian, Gabriele Rosa, a democrat strictly loyal to his

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 345

principles. Much more widely circulated to-day than
any of these is the concise and synthetic Sommario delta
storia d'ltalia, by Count Cesare Balbo (1789-1853), of
Turin, deputy and in 1848 president of the first constitu-
tional ministry of Piedmont, to whom we owe a life of
Dante and numerous political writings, among which Le
spcranze d'ltalia ("The Hopes of Italy") published in
1844, was designed to prove Gioberti's theory — the neces-
sity of national independence and the value of the idea
of a Neoguelphic federation. But many things in that
Sommario can not stand in the light of critical study and
research; and the same may be said in general of the
histories mentioned above.

On the contrary, the two great works of Michele
Amari (1806-1889), of Palermo, retain perfectly their
reputation for accuracy, with their capital importance.
This illustrious patriot, in exile at Paris from 1842 to
1848, and again, after he had been minister of the Rev-
olutionary Government of Sicily, from 1849 to 1859, re~
turned as minister of his native island with Garibaldi dic-
tator, then ruled the destinies of public instruction in the
Kingdom of Italy, and for many years taught the Arabic
language and literature in the Istituto di Studii Superiors
in Florence. His history of the Sicilian Vespers, and,
still better, the history of the Mussulmans in Sicily, on
which he spent thirty years, are works of both science
and art ; the last-named was likened by D'Ancona to "a
beautiful edifice having the solidity of the antique and
the modern finish of detail." By these words Amari
aided in establishing among us the scientific method in
historic study, illuminating them with much variety and
ingenuity of philosophic theory.

346 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

CHAPTER XI
THE LITERATURE OF NEW ITALY

, once more a united nation after so many
misfortunes and so great glory, seems for a time
IGSS active and productive in literary work.
The best results of the artistic efforts of the Ital-
ians, from 1860 to 1870, are perhaps in criticism. Into
this field Carducci and D'Ancona have entered; and in
it, justly praised and admired, reigns supreme the inaug-
urator of psychologic and aesthetic criticism, Francesco
De Sanctis (1818-1883), of Morra Irpina, Professor at
Zurich during his exile, then in the University at Naples,
and for some time Minister of Instruction in the King-
dom of Italy. He was a disciple of the purist, Basilio
Puoti, but did not cling with the tenacity of the oyster
to the ideas learned at school; he thought and wrote
freely and with genius. His most important critical works
are two volumes of essays, a study of Petrarch and an-
other of Leopardi, and a Storia dclla lettcratura italiana. In-
clined by nature to the speculative side of criticism, he
devoted his attention in his writings, particularly to a dis-
section of the various works of art, with intent to gather
from them the animating thought. In this he succeeded
incomparably, giving proof of an intellect at the same
time robust and subtle. The debt of recognition of pres-
ent-day Italian criticism to him is not small for the
mortal blow he dealt the old rhetoric, all formula and
precept.

But there is a lack of background to the figures in
his literary pictures; for, as he cares only for great wri-
ters and great works, because upon those only is it pos-
sible to exercise aesthetic analysis, everything that in art

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 347

is not the creation of a single writer, but the work of
the people, the impersonal creation of the national spirit,
escapes him. Hence in his history of Italian Literature
the imperfect idea of the general character of each age
and of the inner history of the development of poetic
forms; hence, for us, the necessity of uniting the intui-
tions of his method, at times divinations, with those
canons of scientific treatment which the most cultured
nations of Europe have observed for many years with-
out a shadow of wavering in classic and in romantic phi-
lology.

Other critics and writers of various kinds of literature
flourished between 1860 and 1880: Eugenio Camerini
(1811-1875), of Ancona, whose Profili and Nuoi'i profili
kttcrarii, rich in wise and original observations, are still
deservedly held in high esteem; Carlo Tenca (1816-1883),
of Milan, author of praiseworthy political and literary
writings; Giuseppe Guerzoni (1835-1886), of Mantua, a
a politician and soldier who occupied the chair at Padua
formerly held by Zanella, where he was engaged in the
civic education of Italian youth, and wrote fine biogra-
phies of Garibaldi and of Bixio; Vittorio Imbriani (1840-
1886), of Naples, a critic witty, bold, combative, erudite,
and of singular temper; and, above all, Luigi Settem-
brini (1813-1877), a Neapolitan also, who, after an im-
prisonment of many years at Santo Stefano, nobly en-
dured, was chosen professor in the University of Naples
and devoted himself with ardor to the work of teaching.
Between 1866 and 1872 he published three volumes of
lessons in Italian Literature, pleasing and systematic,
but superficial; besides a translation of Lucian, he left
beautiful and important recollections of his life. Settem-
brini's Lezionc, like the history of Italian Literature by
Paolo Emiliani Giudici, a Sicilian, have had their day.
The work of De Sanctis remains, and doubtless will re-
main. Prati is at this time hailed by the majority as

348 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

prince of the lyric poets of Italy. And in truth his
verses, especially the sonnets and the Canto d'Igea, have
a singular refulgence; he is full of ardor and of musical
harmony; his lines flow from his pen spontaneously, full
of color, sonorous. But too often the style is unequal,
too often the splendor of the form conceals the deficiency
of thought, and the verse speaks to the ear and not to
the mind; hence the fame given to him by his own gen-
eration may not be confirmed by those to come.

Aleardo Aleardi (1812-1878), of Verona, a conspir-
ator, a prisoner at Josephstadt in 1859, then Professor of
./Esthetics at Florence, and lastly Senator of the King-
dom— he, too, as a poet had the applause of his country-
men in this age, and certainly he was not wanting in ac-
tivity of mind and in sentiment; but it not infrequently
becomes sentimentalism, academic and empty. His finest
things, as to both matter and form, are the Monte Circello
and the Prime Storie ("Primal Histories").

Finally, the primacy is claimed from Prati and Aleardi
by Giacomo Zanella (1820-1888), of Chiampo in the Vi-
centino, Professor for many years in the University of
Padua, who was truly one of the noblest poets of New
Italy. Classic though modern singer of the harmonies
of the outer world with the moral world, from his chair
at Padua he educated the first generations of liberated
Venice to a love of the beautiful and true; the faith of
the Christian did not prevent admiration for the con-
quests of thought, nor was the zeal of the priest an ob-
stacle to the citizen's love of country. Among his lyrics
the most perfect and most profound is the ode to a fos-
sil sea-shell, which is most exquisitely elaborated. Very
beautiful are also the Veglia ("Vigil"), // taglio dell' isttno
di Suez ("The Cutting of the Suez Isthmus"), Egoismo e
carita, Milton e Galileo, and the collection of poems en-
titled Astichello.

Many other poets had their readers and admirers at this

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 349

period. Giuseppe Revere (1812-1889), of Trieste, author
of historic dramas not adapted to the stage, and of prose
lively and occasionally humorous, — Bozzctti alpini ("Al-
pine Sketches") and Marine e paesi. In the fine and ele-
gant subtlety of many of his poems he resembles Heine,
whom, together with Foscolo and Lucian, he greatly ad-
mired. To the Milanese Emilio Praga (1839-1875), one
of the brightest minds of what was called the third gen-
eration of romanticists, but by reason of his dissolute life
dead in the flower of his years, we owe some collections
of poesy, where, in the midst of French imitations and
faults of style, are passages original in thought and form.
Francesco Ball* Ongaro (1810-1873), of Oderzo, a priest,
then a Garibaldian and an exile, and lastly a professor,
rose to fame especially by a drama // fornarctto, by his
Stornclli on political subjects and in popular tone, which
were a happy novelty, and by many beautiful poems.

The extempore poet Giuseppe Regaldi (1809-1883), of
Novara, after running through Italy and other regions
of Europe, amid the applause of literati and the smiles
of the beautiful, after gathering in the Orient material
for inspiration and study, became public Instructor of
History in the new Kingdom of Italy, and devoted himself
to polishing his verses and writing more, among them
the fine ode on the pass in the Cottian Alps and a poem
in polimeter on Water. Regaldi's poetry resounds with
sincere accents of love of country, devotion to the dyn-
asty of Savoy, and faith in the destiny designed by God
for the human race. If it were not for his use of hack-
neyed expedients, his art would seem not inadequate for
the moral, civil and scientific subjects congenial to him.

The three poets mentioned above — Prati, Aleardi, and
Zanella — were still in their glory when Carducci's first
volume appeared in 1857. Giosue Carducci, born in 1836
at Valdicastello near Pietrasanta, and from 1860 Pro-
fessor of Italian Literature at the University of Bologna,

350 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

revealed the originality of his genius most clearly in the
Odi barbare, and led the way that writers of the new
generation should follow in order to free themselves from
empty romanticism as well as from the affectation of
spontaneity by mere random versification. He has re-
vived the old tradition of our literature for artistically
elaborate form, and has made it not only a revival but a
renewal, because he has infused the spirit of the modern
age into every one of his creations. Thus the sane art
of the Greeks, of the Latins, of Dante, of Ariosto, has
cured us of the languor or fancied "pathos"; classicism
has risen to new life in Italy. For the sentiment, the
conception of nature peculiar to the ancients lives again
in Carducci's art, not merely the extrinsic and the formal
of classic art, as with Monti and his school. Carducci
resembles Foscolo, but surpasses him in originality
and fecundity. In the Juvenilia (1850-60), in the Levia
gravia (1861-1871), various in subjects and versification,
he prepares his weapons and drills himself; in his hymn
to Satan he descends into the lists, agile and courageous ;
finally, in the three collections of Odi barbare (1877, 1882,
1889), in the Giambi ed epodi ("Iambics and Epodes")
(1867-1879) and in the Rime nuove (1861-1887) he returns
to the field with arms more staunch and more brilliant.
A consensus of praise saluted the appearance of Carduc-
ci's first odes in Italy, and they are perhaps the most
perfect and sincere of his creations. In them the corre-
spondence of form and thought is complete; the meters
of Horace, recalled to life without violence to the Itali-
anity of the rhythm, were well adapted to receive new
pictures of figures and landscapes of Hellas and of Rome.
The second and third volumes of odes have vigor and
elevation of thought; among them are some on modern
subjects, including those on the death of Eugene Na-
poleon, and on the grave of Shelley; but they do not
equal the best of the preceding volume. In the latest

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 351

odes, published on various occasions since 1890, recently
collected, are some of the finest examples ; indeed, in the
matter of technique they surpass the others.

Naturally such a poet founds a school. Among his
followers were Gabriele D'Annunzio, born in 1864, of
Pescara, who adopted the "barbaric" meters, with move-
ments all his own, in Canto noro; and Guido Mazzoni,
born in 1859, a Florentine, in his first poems, where he
shows unusual skill in the treatment of the Alcaic ode.
These and Giuseppe Chiarini, of Arezzo, born in 1833,
author of poems of merit, in which the chord of sorrow
often vibrates, experimented with the new Carduccian
meters in translations from Greek and Latin. But Car-
ducci's influence did not rest like a yoke on those of
real genius and vigor. Mazzoni found his peculiar note
in domestic poetry, Voci ddla Vita ("Voices of Life").
D'Annunzio found his in ardent representations of the
enjoyments of sense, Intermezzo di rime; to these, less ex-
treme, were united afterward impressions of the outer
world treated with an exquisiteness usually excessive;
also less adventurous in respect of technique, Isotteo, La
Chimera, Poema paradisiaco, Odi navali, and others. Severino
Ferrari, born in 1856, of Alberino near Bologna, and Gio-
vanni Marradi, born in 1852, of Leghorn, returning to the
older measures of the country, expressed sentiment or
depicted natural scenery with lively fantasy.

Meantime others cultivated with success the lyric, the
only form saved from the wreck of national poetry, and
in a manner quite independent of the Carduccian. Ar-
turo Graf, born in 1848 at Athens, but Italian by educa-
tion and sentiment, revived the poetry of sorrow with
psychologic variations and in some passages with tragic
grandeur, in his Medusa, Dopo il tranionto, Lc Danaidi, and
Morgana. Olindo Guerrini, born in 1845, of San Alberto
di Ravenna, drew his inspiration from French lyrics, es-
pecially Baudelaire's. His Postiima, published in 1877 as

352 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

the work of one Lorenzo Stecchetti, deceased, was largely
circulated by reason of the fluency of the verse, as well
as the freedom of erotic language ; and he explained and
defended the theory of the so-called realism in another
publication, Nova polemica. Mario Rapisardi, of Catania,
born in 1844, an enemy of Carducci, with whom he held
a bitter controversy, cultivated the lyric; though his
name is specially connected with some longer poems.

We should speak of many others, if space were not
lacking, who rise above the common herd of adorers
of the Muses that have swarmed throughout the penin-
sula in the past three decades. As examples of this bet-
ter class may be named the lamented Enrico Panzacchi;
also Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo, Domenico Gnoli, Giusep-
pe Aurelio Costanzo, Father Giuseppe Manni, Ada Negri,
Vittoria Aganoor, Giovanni Bertacchi, Vittorio Betteloni,
and Francesco Pastonchi.

We must content ourselves with noting that the at-
tention of Italians is now fixed with particular confidence
upon three poets: D'Annunzio, Marradi, and Giovanni
Pascoli, the last-named born in 1855 at San Mauro di
Romagna, noted also as an exquisite Latinist and as a
critic. In the Myrica, in the Poemetti, in the Canti di
Castclvecchio, he has expressed with admirable fidelity
certain unnoted voices of nature and of sentiment, using
subtle aesthetic discrimination, and succeeding in being,
if not perhaps always very lucid, always original and sug-
gestive.

Neither can more than passing mention be made of
some really notable translators from ancient and modern
poets: Augusto Franchetti, translator of Aristophanes;
Giuseppe Fraccaroli, of Pindar; Onorato Occioni, of
Silius Italicus; Italo Pizzi, of the Persian poet Firdusi;
Bernardino Zendrini, Casimiro Varese, and Chiarini, of
Heine ; and Emilio Teza, an illustrious linguist, expert in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 353

the secrets of art, translator of poets of many ages and
countries.

Among the contemporary prose-writers is Carducci
again, one of the very first by the Italianity and the singu-
lar vigor and originality of his style. Quite different
from his is the prose of Edmondo De Amicis, (born in
1846), of Oneglia, the sole "epigono" of Manzoni that has
risen to renown. He was an officer at first in our army,
and made himself known to Italians in 1869 by a collec-
tion of sketches, pleasant and attractive, of military life.
This was followed by descriptions of travels, a book for
boys, a study of friendship, tales, and other writings, in
all of which he has produced riches of sentiment and
exploited the various aptitudes of his mind. In these
later times De Amicis seems to have found a way of his
own in art. Having freed himself from his old optimism,
in the books Sull' Oceano, La carrozza di tutti, and Menwrie,
as well as in some conferences and discourses gathered
under the title Spcranzc c glorie ("Hopes and Glories"),
he has turned the psychologic analysis, which he has been
gradually refining more and more, to the humble and the
suffering of human society of to-day.

Another prose-writer of our time who takes a place
among the most celebrated is Ruggiero Bonghi (1827-
1895), a Neapolitan, an admirable writer, translator of
Plato, author of innumerable works in politics, history,
philosophy, criticism and economy. Much less prolific
but a very terse writer, was Marco Tabarrini, of Pomar-
ance (1818-1898), to whom we owe valuable studies in
historical criticism and a beautiful book on Gino Cap-
poni. In clear and candid elegance of style he is rivaled
by Cesare Guasti (1822-1889), of Prato, historian and
philologist. Tullo Massarani (1826-1905), of Mantua,
and Gaetano Negri (1838-1902), of Milan, published sug-
gestive books on various subjects. Ferdinando Martini,
of Monsummano, born in 1841, a statesman, orator, and

28

354 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

conferenziere, writes brilliant and subtle prose. Less
fluency but a singular variety of ideas was in Paulo
Fambri (1827-1897), a Venetian, known also as a writer
of comedies.

Giuseppe Puccianti, born in Pisa in 1830, a Manzonian
and writer of graceful Tuscan, is the author of poems,
tales in rhyme, epigrams, and little comedies for the
young; also of a good educative book, // piccolo Emilio,
and noteworthy critical essays. The following writers
are also noted for beauties of style and other fine literary
qualities: Enrico Nencioni (1839-1896), a Florentine and
connoisseur of modern foreign literature; Panzacchi, al-
ready recorded as a poet; Pompeo Gherardo Molmenti,
a Venetian born in 1852, historian and art critic; and Vit-
torio Vecchi ("Jack la Bolina"), born in Marseilles in
1843, a graceful writer on marine subjects. Like praise
is due to Aristide Gabelli (1830-1891), of Belluna, noted
for pedagogic studies, and to the celebrated naturalist
Antonio Stoppani (1824-1890), to Paolo Lioy, and nota-
bly to Grazia Deledda, the Sardinian novelist.

In the romance and in the novel of Italy after 1860
liberal imitations from the French predominated over
original work, especially imitations of Zola, the most cel-
ebrated representative of the realistic school.

The historical romance, which had no longer reason
to be, having disappeared, the masterpiece of Manzoni
continued none the less to exert an influence on our wri-
ters. The characteristic tradition of our country was not
interrupted; Anton Giulio Barrili, born in 1836, of Sa-
vona, prolific and versatile, continued it with his innu-
merable romances; Salvatore Farina, born in 1846, of
Sorso near Sassari, connected himself with it, approaching
the manner of Dickens in the optimism and the humor
of which certain of his stories are full. But the Italian
romance of the past thirty years has been inspired by
the same ideas that inform contemporaneous foreign ro-

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 355

mances ; that is to say, not common food for the curiosity
of readers weary or in haste or inattentive, but founts
of intellectual enjoyment for those able to appreciate the
subtle dissection of character and passion. To Giovanni
Verga, born in 1840, of Catania, the life of the people
and of the middle class in his Sicily has offered subjects
for many romances and novels that are full of truth
and vigor, notwithstanding certain artifices of manner.
Matilde Serao, born at Patrasso in 1856, who stands first
among the woman authors of fame in Italy, by activity
of imagination and vigor of style, abo has tales master-
fully constructed from observation of men and man-
ners which probably will stand the test of time.

Gabriele D'Annunzio, too, has made psychologic anal-
ysis a feature of his novels, read to-day throughout Eu-
rope, as well as of some of his dramas — among which
La figlia di Jorio is particularly original and vigorous. He
owes much to the French — Zola, Flaubert, Maupassant,
and others — and something to the Russians — Tolstoi
and Dostojevski. Not only for this analysis is he read,
but also to give the reader intellectual enjoyment in the
music, in the exuberant and almost oriental richness of
the style.

Much better for the young are the romances of An-
tonio Fogazzaro, of Vicenza, born in 1842. They are es-
pecially fine in the drawing of character. Fogazzaro, who
is the author of two volumes of verse as well, always
gives a sincere tone of high spirituality to his creations.

Of the other living novelists who are held in high es-
timation— as Girolamo Rovetta, Luigi Capuana, Renato
Fucini, the last-named a lively painter of manners in the
Vcglie di Ncri, and author of fine sonnets in the Pisan dia-
lect— we cannot speak more particularly.

But Rovetta, a dramatic author as well, leads us to
speak of the drama, of whose fortunes the same may be
said, in general, that was said of the romance. Tom-

356 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

maso Gherardi del Testa (1815-1881), of Terricciola di
Pisa, draws with spirit the manners of the middle class
in Tuscany in his numerous comedies, notable also for
the purity of their Italian style. Vincenzo Martini, of
Florence (1803-62), whose // cavalier e d'lndustria is still
famous, stands high as a playwright.

As Felice Romani held the field upon our stage with
his famous musical dramas, so did Paolo Ferrari, of Mo-
dena (1822-1889), until about 1880 with his historic come-
dies, of which some are really praiseworthy — Goldoni e
le sue sedici commedie nuovc, Parini e la satira, — and with
his dramas a tcsi (problem dramas), that is, aiming to
prove a moral or social theory. He was good in comedy;
but in this latter kind of drama — // suicido, II duello, Le
due dame, and others — of the class of those in France by
Augier and Dumas fils — his characters declaim too much,
and he carries to excess the use of some hackneyed stage
expedients. Paolo Giacometti, of Novi Ligure (1817-
1882), among his many and varied histrionic works, has
some dramas a tcsi, as La morte civile, where the effort
at strength and brilliance is too apparent. In comedy at
a certain time he seemed to contest the palm with Fer-
rari Achille Torelli, a Neapolitan born in 1844, who
gained great applause with his Mariti in 1867.

There were, from 1870 to 1880, noteworthy cultivators
of the historic drama. One, Pietro Cossa (1830-1881), a
Roman, drew his inspiration from the memories of his
glorious city; but he treated the great personages that
he brought upon the stage without rhetorical enthusiasm,
clearing away the dim or roseate mists of legend from
them; and in Nerone, Messalina, Cleopatra, and others, he
draws with realism and crude coloring the corruptions
of ancient Rome in lines close to common speech, the
versification weak, but adapted to the mixture of comic
and tragic, and to the variety of the numerous interloc-
utors. In other than Roman subjects Cossa is not so

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 357

good. They have been treated with better success by
Felice Cavallotti (1842-1898), a Milanese and a celebrated
political orator, to whom we owe also a scenic "bozzetto"
in Martellian verse exquisitely elaborated, // Cantico dei
Cantici ("The Canticle of Canticles"), and comedies orig-
inal in conception if not always technically correct; and
by Leopoldo Marenco (1836-1899), the son of Carlo, a
noted author of tragedies who lived in the first half of
the century. The stage was held long by boczctti and
proverbi, among them some unusually brilliant and
graceful by Ferdinando Martini, previously recorded, a
son of the comedy-writer Vincenzo — Chi sa il guoco non
I'insegni ("He who knows the game does not teach it"),
// pcggio passo £ qucllo dell' uscio ("The worst step is the
one at the threshold), and others; and by the mediaeval
idyls, like // trionfo tfanwre ("The Triumph of Love")
and Una partita a scacchi ("A Game of Chess"), by Giu-
seppe Giacosa, born near Ivrea in 1847, tne latest out-
come of romanticism in dramatic poetry.

To-day the fashion of imitating the celebrated French
playwright Victorien Sardou having declined, that of the
Scandinavians has come in, especially Ibsen, profound
and vigorous, but nebulous, and of the two famous Ger-
mans, Hermann Sudermann and Gerard Hauptmann.

Aside from Rovetta and Giacosa, who has recently writ-
ten a serious and suggestive comedy, Come Ic foglie ("Like
the leaves"), analytical psychologic dramas and lively
comedies have been written by Roberto Bracco, Marco
Praga, Camillo and Giannino Antona-Traversi, Sabatino
Lopez, and others. In dialect, Giacinto Gallina (1852-
1897), °f Venice, took up the Goldonian tradition, renew-
ing and varying it with success.

But after 1860 critical and philological work took many
able minds from original literary production — work car-
ried on with zeal and a common intent to give the nation
a history of its letters worthy the traditions of its culture.

358

'FRANCESCO FLAMINI

The lead in this line of study was taken almost simul-
taneously by Carducci, D'Ancona and Bartoli. They
have freed us from the empty and gossiping style of
criticism of those who, misunderstanding De Sanctis and
denying the canons of the inductive method, triumphant
in the exact sciences, founded chimerical edifices upon
postulates assumed a priori.

Giosue Carducci, who even as regards art is always
guided by the ideas and intuitions of the historic method,
proceeds in the study of literature from analysis of texts
and research among archives and manuscripts in libra-
ries. From these he rises to the broader observation of
genius. Thus, he has offered an ingenious and consistent
synthesis of the history of our literature to the time of
Tasso, with a thorough study of Dante, and has followed
the varying fortunes of the Commcdia in the fourteenth
century.

By the side of Carducci in literary criticism stands
Alessandro D'Ancona, born in Pisa in 1835, and Professor
at the University there from 1860 to 1900, a man of
vast learning and fine historic sense, to whom we owe
works such as Le origini del tcatro italiano ("Origins of the
Italian Drama"), which are the fruit not alone of patient
research, but of singular ability in coordinating and
weighing facts; and, in addition, monographs upon the
most varied subjects, in lively style though constructed
according to rigorous scientific method.

No slight contribution to the work of critical reform,
so well advanced at this day, was made by Adolfo Bar-
toli (1833-1894), of Fivizzano, whose genius is peculiarly
adapted to investigation and dialectics. In his review
of the first two centuries of Italian literature and his his-
tory of Italian literature, which does not come beyond
Petrarch, he discusses disputed questions, offers hypoth-
eses, and disproves legends.

Bartoli taught at the Institute for Higher Studies in

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 359

Florence. Graf, at Turin, and at Naples Zumbini and
D'Ovidio diffused from the chairs of Italian Literature
and Romance Philology the love for scholarly research,
uniting aesthetico-psychologic analysis with it in various
ways, according to the differing bent of their minds.
Graf, with some preliminary studies read at the Univer-
sity and a work upon Rome in the Memory and in the
Imaginations of the Middle Ages, proved theoretically and
practically the need for more scientific treatment of liter-
ary history, afterward adding nine books of high value
and of varied argument. Bonaventura Zumbini, born at
Cosenza in 1840, gave a first impulse to the comparative
study of modern literature with more than one of his
critical essays, which are singularly fine in substance
and in form. Criticism and literary history owe much
also to Francesco D'Ovidio, of Campobasso, born in
1843, a learned philologist and an acute and able writer.

Other noted men have taught criticism with honor,
and cultivated it with success; among them, Giovanni
Mestica of Apiro, born in 1831, and Adolf o Borgognoni
of. Corropoli (1840-1893). As a result, a host of active
and vigorous workers have devoted themselves to clear-
ing up this or that point in our literary history; and,
thanks to the partition and distribution of illustrative
work which has been made in the past twenty years by
tacit accord of students, the most diverse aptitudes have
been put to profit for the construction of the building
desired. One can form an idea of the good accomplished
in this field of study during the past fifteen years by
merely turning over the leaves of the thirty-six vol-
umes already issued of the historical journal of Italian
literature edited by Francesco Novati and Rodolfo
Renier.

Vivid light is thrown on this field from other neigh-
boring fields cultivated with equal zeal and success; as
those of history, classic and neo-Latin philology, modern

360 FRANCESCO FLAMINI

foreign literature, and linguistics. In history, Giuseppe
De Leva, of Zara (1821-1895), with a vast work upon
Charles V from documentary sources, and Pasquale Vil-
lari, a Neapolitan born in 1827, with powerful works on
Savonarola and Machiavelli, have taught the abandon-
ment of subjective criticism and preconceived political
ideas in the search for truth. The work of the second
concerning the author of The Prince belongs to literary
as well as to civil history. Of civil in addition to literary
history are the writings upon Dante and the work in
three volumes upon Dino Compagni, by Isidoro Del
Lungo, born in 1841 at Montevarchi, an able critic and
elegant writer.

No small additions to the study of our literature have
been made by the Roman philologist Domenico Com-
paretti (born in 1835), investigating with vast learning
the fame and fortunes of Virgil in the Middle Ages, and
by Pio Rajna (born in 1847), of Sondrio, a noted neo-
Latinist, investigating the sources of the Orlando Furioso
and the origins of the French epic, illustrating the Reali
di Francia and preparing a critical edition of the De vul-
gari eloquentia, the important beginning of the re-prints
of all Alighieri's works designed by the Italian Dante
Society. Further, the greater familiarity with German
and English writers of genius to whom Chiarini has de-
voted his Studii shake sp ear iani and Studii e ritratti letter arii
("Literary Studies and Portraits"), has aided our critics
to understand certain literary phenomena that have ap-
peared on this side the Alps. Finally, the knowledge of
ancient Italian and of the various dialects of the penin-
sula has been greatly advanced by the studies of learned
and laborious linguists, the highest authority among
whom in Italy and in other countries is Graziadio Isaia
Ascoli, born in 1829 at Gorizia, founder of the Archivio
glotto logico.

During the past decade the work illustrative of our

HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE 361

literary monuments has been made, it not finer, yet
more systematic. The studies upon Dante and those
concerning popular traditions, which have cast so much
light upon our legends and tales, have been continued,
thanks to Giuseppe Pitre, to D'Ancona, and to some
others, with greater uniformity of method. Less often than
formerly is there excess of erudition in this work, and
perhaps more care is given to elegance in literary criti-
cism than formerly. This disposes of the idea that two
schools of this kind of criticism, diverse and opposed, can
exist — the historical and the aesthetic — an absurd and
injurious prejudice, since neither can erudite research dis-
pense with aesthetic analysis, nor the latter with the for-
mer, while united they succeed, with the aid of psychol-
ogy, in revealing to us the inmost heart and inspiration
of masterpieces of literature, and lead us to separate the
author's creative work in them from the part that is the
expression of the sentiment of a people and of an age.

If, proceeding in the course it has entered, criticism
in Italy shall spread more widely among the cultured
the results of scientific research concerning all our works
of art, the study of the past by such methods will very
greatly aid in making the work of the present more finely
artistic. To have knowledge of certain maladies of the
intellect and depravities of taste will serve to cure us
and draw us away from dangers; and while the compar-
ative study of modern literature will cause us to keep
in view the ideas and the forms prevailing from time
to time in the literary productions of Europe, we shall
pursue our own with fuller and more secure conscious-
ness of our traditions and our destiny.

INDEX

Almtl, Antonio. 241
Academic's, ir. i. i; :>•_'. I7u; Arcad-
ian, 2."><l i-t scc|.. 2»;ii. 2HS. 2Y-1,

2:12, 2!>r> ; rimi'ino. 2:11:,;

Delia Crusea, 2::». 2J'.»; Flor-

(iitliic, 2t;n; Gony.aj;a, 220;

Platonic. li:t. !.">:'.: P-mtunian

li M;. i .-,2: Pujml. 27<> : K<.iu:iii,
1 .•••_•::; Trasformati. :_7r.. 2!»n;

rmoristi. liir,; in XVIII Cen-
tury, 261

Arcoiti. Bernardo, !-".»
Arhillinl, Claudio, 242
Adimarl, Ludovico. 242.

.:;ii Giovanni Battista, 189, 193
Adrian!. Marcollo Vtrgilio, 131
Aganoor, Vittoria, 352

tin! (degli) Niccolo, 172
Alamanni, Luigi, 159, 172, 173,

17C. 188

Albany, Countess of, 280, 281
Alberj,':iti. Cnpacelli Francesco, 280,

Z8T. 2ss

Alberico, Frate, 5, 46
Albert! (degli) Antonio, 95
Albert!, Francesco d'Altobianco,

111, 112
Albert!, Leon Battista, 121, 126,

210. 2 r,2
Aldobrnndo, 31
Aldus Manutlus, 151
Aleardl. Aleardo. :: is
Alessandrl (degli) Baldassare

Olimpo, 162

Alexander the Great, 13
Alfano, r,
Alfleri, Vlttorlo, 278 et seq., 280,

281, 283

Algarottl, Francesco, 269, 271, 272
AHgblerl. See Dante
Allone, (iiorannl Giorgio, 185
Amari, Mk-bele, .",(.">
Amarllll. Etrusca, 305
Ambroglnl, Angelo. See Pollziano
Amelougbl, (Jirolamo, 159
Ammlrato, Sclplo, 205
Andreini, Giambattista, 242, 243
Angcllo. Pier. 2L2
Angiolerl, Cecco, 25, 83
Antdiia-Travcrsi, Brothers, 357
Antoniano, Silvio, 222
Aqiiilano, Seraflno. See Clmlnelll
Arcadians, tbc. Soo Academies
Aretino, Leonardo. !»s
Aretino, Pletro, 157, 171, 177, 183-

4, 217

Ariel, Cesare, 311
Aricntl (degll) Giovanni Sabatlno,

122
ArlostoT Gabrlele, 179

Arlosto, Lodovloo. 1.11. M.T «>t se<j.,
157, 108, 178, is- P. 21"
964

Aristotle, 48, 49, 50, 58, 102, 103

Armannino. !»4

Arrlgo da Settlmello. 7, 32, 38. 48

Art and Artists, works on, 193,

21!l. L'.'T

Arthurian romances, 14, 12.",
Ascoll, Graziadio Isala, 3CU
Asinari, Federlco, 211

Bagnoli, Pietro, 335
Halho, Cesare, .". I.",
r.aldi. Bernardino, 209
Baldovini. Francesco, 240
Balducciui, Fillpj).). 2»:»
Ballate, 19. 28, 112

;isluoli, (Jraziolo, 84
Bandeilo, Matteo. liiti
Bandettini, Teresa, 305, 335
Barberino, Andrea, 88
Barbcrino. Francesco, 17
liarblerl, 295

Barrett!, Giuseppe, 194, 290 et se<j.
Baronlo, Cesare, 203
Ban-ill, Anton, Giulio. 354
Bartoli, Adolfo, 40, 358
Bartoli, Danielle, 248
Bartolommeo da Castel della Pleve,

79

Bartolommeo da S. Concordla, 93
Barzelette, 87
Barzizza, Gasparino. 100
Basili, Giovanni Battista, 245
Bassvllle, Hugues, 301
Baudelaire, Charles, 351
Beatrice (Portinari), 39 et seq.,

51, 53, 54, 55
Beccadelll, Antonio. 106
Beccarl, Agostlno, 214
Beccarl, Antonio, 84
Bcccaria. Cesare. 2H.S1. 200, 318
Belcarl, Feo, 1U>. 121, 127
Belli, (Jiuseppe Gioacchino, 335
Bellincionl, Bernardo, 2i:i .
Bellotti. Felice. 888
Bembo. Pietro, 151, 154, 155, 163,

1:112. 199

Bcnedettl, Francesco, 311
Benedetti, .Tacopo, ^2
Benedetto dl Ste. More. 13
Bentl-Bulgarelli. Marlanna, 259
BentiVOgllOb Ercole, 167
BentlTOgllo. culdo, 2-<o
Benucci, Alessandra. 144
Beolco, Anpelo, 185-6
Berchet, Giovanni, 31f,. ::iT
Bernard. St.. :. t
Bernard, St. of Siena, 2 If,

333

364

INDEX

Bernard de Ventadorn, 8
Berni, F., 154, 167, 168, 171
Bertola, Aurelio, 272, 279, 294
Bertrand de Born, 8
Bertucchl, Giovanni, 352
Bessarione, 113
Betteloni, Vittorio, 352
Bettinelli, Saverio, 268, 269, 272,

289

Betussi, Giuseppe, 199
Bianchini, Francesco, 264
Bianco da Siena, 87
Bianconi, Giovanni Lodovico, 273
Biava, Samuele, 333, 334
Bibbiena Cardinal, 180, 300, 301
Biondi, Luigi, 333
Biondo, Flavio, 104, 137
Bisticchi Vespasiano da, 98
Blank verse, use of, 164
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 69-76. 80
Boccalini, Traiano, 232, 250
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 124, 130,

145, 150, 218
Boileau, 228, 268
Bolognetti, Francesco, 161
Bonaccorso da Montemagno, 79
Bonamico, Lazzaro, 151
Bonarelli, Guido, 243
Bonarelli, Prospero, 242
Bonfadio, Jacopo, 192
Bonghi, Ruggiero, 353
Bonichi, Bindo, 84
Bonvesin da Riva, 20
Borgia, Caesar, 132, 135
Borghi, Giuseppe, 333
Borghini, Vincenzo, 207
Borgognoni, Adolfo, 359
Boscan, Juan, 173
Botero, Giovanni, 202, 250
Botta, Carlo, 314
Bracciolini, Francesco, 236, 239,

240
Bracciolini, Poggio, 97, 98, 101,

103, 104, 106
Bracco, Roberto, 357
Brendau, St. 46
Bresciani, Antonio, 337
Breton cycle of romances, .125, 126
Brofferio, Angelo, 335
Bruni, Leonardo, 98, 104. 105
Bruno, Giordano, 212, 252
Brusantini, Vincenzo, 157
Bruto, Giovan Michele, 190
Bulavelli, 10
Buonaccorsi, Biagio, 190
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 166, 172
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, the

younger, 242, 243
Buratti. Pietro, 335
Burchiello, III

BTJrger, Gottfried August, 316
Burlesque poetry, 111, 168, 240,

241, 83-86

Busini Giambattista, 191
Byron, Lord, 330, 333, 339

Caccinl. Giulio, 245
Caffe, II, (journal), 270, 299
Calmo, Andrea, 186
Calogera, Angelo, 265
Calsabigi, Ranieri, 260

Calura, Bernardo Maria, 272

Calvo, Bonifacio, 10

Camerini, Eugenio, 347

Cammelli, Antonio, 130, 174

Campanella, Tommaso, 253

Campani, Niccolo, 186

Campano, Gianantonio, 106

Canigiani, Ristoro, 85

Canova, Antonio, 313

Cantilene, 22

Cantoni, Carlo, 290

Cantft, Cesare, 336, 337

Canzone, the, 59

Capacelli, Francesco, 280, 287, 288

Capecelatro, Francesco, 249

Capitolo, the, 169

Caporali, Cesare, 168, 250

Capponi, Gino, 344

Capuana, Luigi, 355

Caracciolo, Pietro Antonio, 184

Carbonari, the, 331

Carcano, Giulio, 333, 334, 336

Carducci, Giosufi, 346, 349 et seq.,

352, 353, 358; quoted, 75,

157, 258, 308
Carletti, Francesco, 250
Caro, Annibal, 164, 183, 217, 226
Carre>, Luigi, 333, 334
Casalio, Giambattista, 213
Cassi, Francesco, 333
Cassiani, Giuliano, 304
Cassoli, Francesco, 293. 300
Castelletti, Cristoforo, 212
Castelli, Benedetto, 255
Castelvetro, Lodovico, 217
Casti, G.. 260, 274, 293-4
Castiglione, Baldassare, 155, 197,

213

Catherine, St. of Siena, 93
Catholic Reaction, influence of

201, 216
Cato, 53r 54
Cattaneo, Carlo, 341
Cattaneo, Danese, 220
Cattaneo, Simonetta, 118
Cavalca, Domenico, 84, 92
Cavalcanti, Bartolommeo, 201
Cavalcanti, Giovanni, 138
Cavalcanti, Guido, 29, 35
Cavalieri, Bouaventura, 255
Cavallotti, Felice, 357
Caviceo, Jacopo. 195
Ceba, Ansaldo, 232
Cecchi, Giov. Maria, 183
Cecco d' Ascoli, 77
Cellini, Benvenuto, 194
Cene dalla Chitarra, 25
Ceretti, Luigi, 293
Ceroni, Guiseppe Giulio 305
Cesareo, Giov. Alfredo, 352
Cesari, Antonio, 311, 312
Cesarotti, M., 267, 305, 312
Chansons de geste, 11, 12
Charlemagne, romances of, 12, 15,

87, 88, 125, 218
Chateaubriand. 316, 321
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 76
Chenier, Joseph, 286
Chiabrera, Gabriello, 229, 237,

245
Chiaramonte, House of, 15, 88

INDEX

365

Chlarl. Pletro, 284, 2K5

Cblarinl, Giuseppe. :r,l. 352, 360

Chlgl, Agostlno, 186

Chivalry, romances and poetry of,
11 ct seq., 295. See Charle-
magne.

Christina, Queen, 2."0

Clampoll, Giovanni. 232

Clhrarlo, Luigl, 344

Clcerchla, Nlccolo, 87

Clcognara, Leopoldo, 313

Clelo <!' Alcamo, 19

Cigala, Lanfranco, 10

Clmlnelll Seraflne dell' A*nlla,
129, 174, 213

Clno da Plstola, 28. 35

Clttadlnl, Celso, 255

Cocchl, Antonio, 271

Coco, Vlncenzo, 315

Collenucclo, Pandolfo, 122

Colletta. Pletro, 313, 315

Colombia!. Giovanni, 93

Colombo, Mlchele, 312

Colonna, Francesco, 195

Colonna, Glacomo. 61

Colonna, Glusepplna Tnrrlsl, 333

Colonna, Vittorla, 1C.". n;»;

Comedy, 178 et seq.. 243, 260.
rustlcane, 186 ; of the arts or
of masks, 187, IM'J. 1M4, 261

Comic poetry, 159. 237-8

Compagnl. Dino, 17, 89

Comparettl, Domenlco. 300

Contl, Antonio, 262, 2C7

Contrastl, 24

Convenevole da Prato. 60

Corflno, Ludovlco, 195

Corlo. Bernardino, 122

Cornlano, Glambattlsta, 272

Corrente, Cesare, 344

Corslnl, Bartolommeo, 240

Cossa, Pletro, 356

Costa, Lorenzo, 335

Costa, Paolo, 312

Costanza, Giuseppe Aurello, 352

Cotta, Giovanni. 154

Council of Trent, 216, 245. 246

Cresclmbenl. Giovanni Maria, 264

Crescenzl, Pier de', 33

Crlsolara. Manuele, 96, 99

Crudell, Tommaso, 274, 294

Da Flllcnia, Vincenzo, 235
Da Gamhara. Veronica, 165
Dall" Ongaro. Francesco, 349
Dalmlstro. Angelo, 293
D' Althann. Marianna. 259
D* Ambra. Francesco, 182
D'Ancona. A.. 345. 346, 358, 361
Daniel, Arnaud. 8. 26, 66
D'Annunzlo, Gabrlele, 351, 352,

355

Dante. 6, 34 to 60, 76. 77, 79, 95 ;
allusions by, 25, 27 : commen-
taries and criticisms on, 71,
76. 96. 150, 200, 268, 289.
3r,,s; life of, 345; reprints of,
360

Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 260
Da Porto. Lulgl. 197
D' Aquino, Maria, 70, 71, 73

I) Araarona, Tnllln. K,"

Datl, Carlo Roberto, 249

Datl. Leonardo. 11 »

D'Aublgnac, Abbe, 231

Da Valvasone. Krasmo. 209

Davanzati, Bernardo, 204

Davanzatl, Cblaco, 27

Davlla. Knrlco Caterlno. 247

Da Vinci, Leonardo. 143, i-:,2

D' Azeglio, Cesare, 318

D' Azeglio, Massimo, 330. 337, 343

De Anilcis, Edmondo.

Decembrlo, Pier Candido, 100

Declo, Antonio. 1M 1

De la Tallle, Jean. 187

De la Vega, Garcllaso. 174

Del Bene, Senucclo. 78

Del Carretto, Galeotto, 213

Deledda, Grazla. :>.~<l

De Lemene, Francesco, 2.">7

Del Enclna, Juan, 188

De Leva, Giuseppe, 360

Delflco, Melchlorre, 314

Delia Cesa. Giovanni, 164, 197,

198, 201

Delia Crusca. See Academies
Dell' Anguillnra, Giovanni Andrea,

164, 178

Delia Porta, Giambattlstn, 243
I>ella Torre dl Kezzonico. Carlo

Gastone, 200

Del Lungo. Isidoro, 56, 360
Delia Vnlle, Pietro, 250
Delia Vigna, Pletro, 59
De Musset, Alfred. 328
Denlna, Carlo, 297
De Rossi, Giovanni Gherardl, 274
D« Rtteda, Lope, 187, 188
De Paint Gelais, Melin, 187
De Sanctis. F.. 50, 65. 310, 340
De Sa y Miranda, Francesco, 174
Desportes. Philippe. 173
De Spuches. Giuseppe, 333
De Stael. Madame, 316
Destouches, Filippo, 271
De Torres Naharro. B.. 188
Dl Costanzo. Angelo. 1C3, 203 .
Dl Lasso. Orlando. 212
Dl Tarsia. Galeazzo. 164. 172
Dolce. Lodovico, 178. 211
Dolce stile novo. 217
Domenlchl. Lodovico. 217
Domenicl, Giovanni, 120
Donati, Alessio. 84
Donati. Forese, 25. 44
Donation of Constantino, the, 102
Donl. Antonfrancesco, 197, 217 •
Donlzone. 5

Dotti, Bartolommeo. 212
Dottori. Carlo. 239. 242
D* Ovldio. Francesco. 3.">9
Dovlzl. Bernardo. 180. 300. 301
Drama, sacred, 24 : musical. 259 ;

Italian abroad, 187 ; history
of, 297

Dupre". Giovanni. 343
Durante, Ser, 16

Egenetlco. Comante, 258
Emllli. Paolo, 192
Encyclopaedism, 297

366

INDEX

English Influence, 271

Enselmino da Montebelluna, 87

Epic poetry, 159, 218, 236, 335

Epicuro Marc' Antonio, 214

Epigraphy. 205-6

Epistolography, 216

Equicola, Mario, 199, 231

Erasmus, 151

Fritreo, Gian Nicio, 249

Erizzo. Sebastian o, 216

Este, House of, 145, 146, 221, 223

Fabronl, Angelo, 207

Fable literature, 294

Fagiuoli. Giambattista, 261

1'aitinelli, Pietro, 84

Fambri, Paulo, 354

Fantoni, Giovanni, 305

Farces, 184 et seq.

Farina, Salvatore, 354

Faurlel, Claude, 318

Favaro, quoted, 254

Fedele, Cassandra. 1 01

Federici, Camillo, 288

Ferrari, Giuseppp. 342

Ferrari, Paolo. 356

Ferrari, Severino. 351

Ferreti, Ferreto, 97

Ferrucci, Caterina Franceschi, 326

Ferrucci, Luigi Grisostomo, il36

Fiacchi, Luijri, 204

Ficino. Marsilio. 114. 231

Filangieri. Gaetcno. 2CS

Filelfo, Francesco. 7S

Filelfo, Giovanni Miv/:n. 00, 100

Finiguerri, Stefano. 116

Fiorentino, Salomcne. 306

Fioretti, Benedetto. 2">

Firenzuola, Agnolo, l.°3. 197

Flagellants, ballate of the. 22, 24

Flaminio, Marcantomo. 154

Florence, language of. 1, 204, 207;
lyric poetry, 27 : character,
34; histories. 137, 139, 190,
191, 205 ; books on govern-
ment, 140, 142

Foggazzaro, Antonio. 355

Foglietta, Uberto, 192

Folengo, Teofilo. 158. 240

Folgore. da S. Gemismano, 25

Fontanini, Giusto, 2P5

Fontenelle, Bernardo. 267

Fornaciari, Luigi, 312

Forteguerri. Niccolft. 295

Fortini. Pietro, 197

Foscarini. Marco. 288

Foscolo, Ugo. 271, 306 et seq.. 330

Fracastoro, Girolamo, 153, 154

Fraccaroli. Giuseppe. 352

France, literature of. 11 : Italian
influence on. 270, 200. 300

Francesca da Rimini. 56, 316

Francpsco d' Assisi. St.. 21

Franchetti. Augusto. 352

Franco, Mattpo, 1?2

Franco. Niccolo. 195. 217

Frescobaldi, Dlno. 28

Frescobaldl. Leonardo. 91

Frescobaldi, Matteo, 78

Frezzi. Federieo. 77

Frlsi, Paolo, 272

Frottole, 86, 184
Frugoni, Carlo, 258, £69, 274
Fucini, Renato, 355
Fumano, Adamo. 153
Fusinato, Arnaldo, 339

Gabelli, Aristide, 354
Galiani, Ferdinando. 270. 271
Galilei. Galileo, 242, 252, 253 et

seq.

Gallina, Giacinto, 357
Galluppi, Pasquale, 342
Gamabra. Veronica da. 165, 172
Gareth. Benedetto, 130
Gargallo. Tommaso. 333
Garibaldi's Hymn, 332
Gasparinetti, Antonio, 305
Gazzoletti, Antonio, 332
Gelli, Giovanni. 183. 200, 207
Gemisto. Giorgio. 113
Genovesi, Antonio, 298
German literature, influence of,

272

Gessner, Solomon, 273. 274
Gbedini. Fernando, 295. 296
Gherardi, Giovanni da Prato, 95
Gherardi del Testa, Tommaso, 356
Gbibellines, the, 36
Giacometti, Paolo, 356
Giacosa, Giuseppe, 357
Giamboni, Bono, 33
Giambullari. Pier Francesco, 188
Giancarli. Gigio Artemio, 186
Gianni, Francesco, 301
Gianni, Lapo, 28
Giannone, Pietro, 297
Giannone, Pietro, (a later) 331
Giannotti, Donato. 142, 181
Gigli, Girolamo, 260
Gioberti. Vincenzo, 341
Gioia. Melchiorre, 310. 322. 312
Giordani, Pietro, 313 et scq. ;

quoted. 188, 248. 322, 330
Giordano da Rivalto. 92
Giovanni Fiorentino, 80
Giovio, Paolo, 189, 193
Gipsy life, comedies of, 1R6
Giraldi. Giambattista, 160, 176,

215-16

Giraldo de Bornelhe. 8
Giusti, Giusoppi. 330 et ?eq.
Giustinian, Leonardo, 112
Giusto de Conti, 110
Gliommeri. 184
Gnoli. Domenico. 3~2
Goethe. 195, 300. 308. 327, 323
Goldoni, Cnrlo. 284 et seq., 288
Gonzaga, Elisabetta. 198
Gonzaga, Rripione. 220. 222
Gonzaga, Vincenzo, 224
Gonzone, 4
Goracci, Luigi. 333
Gorello. Ser. 91
Gozzadini. Tommaso. 33
Gozzi. Carlo. 2S5
Gozzi. Gaspare, 229, 288 et seq.,

293

Graf. Arturo. 351. 359
Grav'na, H'an Vincenzo, 242, 257,

2.~n. 261. 2fifi
Gray, Thomas, 267. 271. 303, 311

INDEX

367

Cwk romances. IS
Grazianl, Glrolamo, 237. 320

mi. Alil'.n. liiii. 1SL'
GrosHi, TommuHo. 334, :i:;5, 336
Gn.to. Lulgl, 211
Guadagnoli, Antonio. ::.'::'
Gualtlerl da S. Vltnlo, 213
Guarlnt. Gtambattlsta, 214
died. Giorgio, !>1
Guelphs, the, 36
Ciicrni//.!. Francesco, 337, 338
Guerrlnl, Ollndo, 351
Cucrzonl, Giuseppe, 347
Gulcclardlnl, Francesco, 138 ct

seq., 314
Guldaloste, 21
Gnldl, Alcssandro, 230
Guldicclone, Giovanni, 172, 192,

201

Guldlce, Paolo Emlllanl, 347
Guido da Pisa, 93
Gulllaume de Lorris, 16
Gnlnlze.ni, Guldo, 26
Gulttone d' Arezzo, 2G, 30

Hagedorn, Frledrloh. 258

Heine. Moinrirh, 349

Historical literature. 188-192. 202,

203. 246, 217, 248, 263-5,

314-15, 344

Historical romance, 336
History, philosophy of. 263
Homer, translations of, 303, 309,

310

Horace, Imitators of, 300, 305
Humanists, early, 94, 96

Ibsen, Henrik. 357

Imbrlani, Vittorlo, 347

Ingegnerl. Angelo, 223, 224

Intlerl, Bartolommeo, 298

Irnerio, 6

Italian language, the. 1 et seq., 9,

50, 154-6. "207, 311. 312
Italian Literature, works on, 297,

.".IT. 851

Italy, histories of. 122. 141, 20«.
'2<:4. 297, 314, 315, 335, 341,
345

Jolly Friars, the, 26
Jongleurs. 8, 12, 15, 20; of God,
21, 23

Klopstock, Frledrich. 301, 303
Kotzebue, August, 288

L' Acerba, Stabills. 77
I.a Farina, Giuseppe, 344
Lain. Glambatttota, 240
Lambertl. Lnigi, 203. 300
I.ambruschini, Raffaello, 342
Landino. Orlstoforo, 114
Lando, Ortensio. 197
Lanxi. I.ui.-i. 207
Larlvcy. Pierre, 187
Lasca, II, 1<!!>. 1S2. 195
Lascarls, Constantino, 105, 151

•ris. Giovanni, 151
Latin, cultivation of. 151 et seq.;

and Nco-Latln, 1

Latlnl, nrunettl. 17, 31, 35

OTa.ids, 22. s7. 112

Laura de Bade, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68,

70

Law, works on. 297-299
LunrtlU, Glanfrancvsco, 241

• 'ill. Domenlco, 261
I.fgnuluolf). Grasso. 122
l.iriMii, N'lcbolas, 330
Leone, Ebreo, 199
Leopard I. Glai-omo. '1?.?,. 236, 237,

{13, 32:i et m t

Lepanto. battle of, 208

I.oti. Gn-gorlf). L'Js

Leto, Pomponio. 152

Libraries, founding of, 152

Lloy, Paolo, ::.".»

Lljipl. Lorenzo, 240

Llvlera. Glambattista, 211

Longollus. 151

I. (/]>«•/, Sabatlno, :'.:•'

I^orenzl, Kartolommeo, 295

Lorenzf. Glambattista, 270

Love, books on, 199

Lucia. r.L.'

Lultprand, 4

Lyric poetry, 161, 300. 333-335, 351

Macaronic poetry. 1 57
Machiavelll. NiccoR., 131 et seq.,

155, 180-1, 100.

Mac'nKlii-Stro;:,.!. Alcssnndra, 1-2
Maffei, Andrea, 332
Maffel, Giampietro. 203
Mattel, Sclplone, 262
Magalottl. Lorenzo, 2.""
Maggl. Carlo Maria. 257
Maledlco sonnet, the, 170
Malespina, Alberto, 9
Malmignatl. Glullo, 237
Mamell. Goffredo, 331
Mamianl. Terenzlo. 342
Manfred!. Eustachio. 205, 296
Mannl, Giuseppe, 352
Manno, Giuseppe, 344
Mantovano, Francesco, 174
Manutius, Aldus, 151
Manzolll, Pier Angelo. 153
Manzonl, Alessandro, 318 et seq.
Marattl, Faustina. 257
Marchettl, Alessandro, 234
Marenco, Carlo, 3.~>7
Marenco, Leopoldo. 357
Marineo, Luceo, 103
Marino. G.. 172. 221. 222. 231, 237
Marradl, Giovanni, 351, .".vj
Marsupnlnl, Carlo, 108
Martelll, Ludovlco, 176
Martelll. Pier Jacopo. 261, 271
Martelllano meter, 261
Martini. Ferdinando, 341, 353,

867

Martini, Vineenzo. 356
Martlno da Canale, 31
Martyr. I'etor d'Anghlera, 193
Mascardl, Agostlno. LMM
Mascheronl, L.. 294. 302. 304
Mnssaranl, Tnllo. .•;.-,:;
Masucclo, Galernltano, 120
Matilda, 53, 54

368

INDEX

Maurizio, Bufalenl, 343

Mazza, Angelo, 305

Mazzi, 274

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 341

Mazzonl, Guido, 228, 351

Mazzuchelll, Giammaria, 265

Medici, Cosimo, the elder, 113

Medici, Alessandro, 140, 141, 176,

283

Medici Giuliano, 118, 135
Medici, Giulio, 136, 137
Medici, Lorenzino, 182, 201
Medici, Lorenzo, 108, 112, 113,

115 et seq., 127
Meli, Giovanni, 335
Menzini, Benedetto, 234, 241
M-ercantini, Luigi, 332
Mestica, Giovanni, 359
Metastasio, Pietro, 258, 259, 279
Meung, Jean de, 16
Micali, Giuseppe, 313
Michelangelo. See Buonarroti
Milizla Francesco. 297
Milton. John, 242, 268, 300. 314,

333

Minzoni, Onofrio, 304
Moliere, J. B. P., 188. 231. 260
Molmenti, Pompeo, Gherardo, 354
Molza. Francesco Maria. 171
Montaigne, Michel de. 223
Monteverdi, Claudio. 245
Monti, Vincenzo, 258, 274, 300 et

seq., 312, 317

Muratori, Ludovico. 206, 264
Murlota, Gaspare, 231
Mtissato, Albertino, 96
Musso, Cornelio, 216
Muzio, Girolamo, 207

Napione, Galeani, 311

Naples, Histories of, 203, 249, 297,

315

Nap»ll-8ignorelll, Pietro, 297
Nai-di, Jacopo. 180, 189, 193
Navagero. Andrea, 154, 192
Negri, Ada. 352
Negri, Francesco, 249
Negri, Gaetano. 353
Nelli, Jacopo, 261
Nelli, Pietro, 168
Nencioni, Enrico, 354
Neo-classicism, 302
Nerll (de). Fillppo, 190
Newton, Isaac, 267
Niccoll, Niccolo, 96, 98
Niccolini, Giambattista, 338
Niccolo da Poggibonsi. 91
NSccolS da Verona, 15, 16
Niccolo Postumo da Correggio, 128
Nicolini, Giuseppe, 333
Nicholas V, Pope. 101 105
NIevo Ippolito, 343
Nogarola, Isolta, 101
Nomi, Federico. 239
Novati, Francesco, 359
Novels, 195. 215-16, 245, 354; In

verse, 334

Occione. Onorato, 352
Odasi. Tifl. 158
Opera, 244

Orsyagna, 84

Orsini, Cesare, 232

Orti, Oricellari. 136, 137, 152

Orthography, changes in, 156

Pagano, Maria, 293
Paleario, Aonio, 153
Palingenio, Marcello, 153
Pallavicino. Sforza. 246
Palmier!, Matteo, 121
Pananti, Filippo, 339
Panigarola, Francesco, 216
Panvinio, Onofrio, 205-6
Panzacchi. Enrico. 352, 354
Papi, Lazzaro, 314
Parabosco, Girolamo. 172, 195
Paradisi, Agostino, 20
Paradlsi, Giovanni. 293. 300
Parini, Giuseppe, 229, 274, 275 et

seq., 293, 294
Partenide. Irmendav 288
Paruta, Paolo, 202
Pascoli, Giovanni. 3.12
Pasquinade, the, 170
Passaranti, Jacopo, 92
Passeroni, Gian Carlo, 275
Passion, representations of the, 24
Pastonchi, Francesco, 352
Pastoral drama and poetry, 171.,

213-15, 243, 251
Patecchio, Gerardo, 24
Paterno, Lodovico, 168
Patrick, St., 46

Patriotic poetry, 331-2. See Po-
litical Poetry
Patrizi, Francesco, 200
Pazzi (de') Alfonso, 170
Pecora. (del) Jacopo. 78
Pellegrino, Camillo, 224
Pellico, Silvio, 316. 317
Ferego. Gaetano, 294
Peri. Jacopo, 244
Perticari, Giulio, 313
Pescetti. Orlando, 211
Petrarch, Francesco, 60 et seq.,

106 ; imitations. 78, 79, 161 ;

commentaries. 200. 330
Piccolomini, ^Eneas Silvius (Pius

II), 101
Pico della Mirandola Giovanni,

114

Fieri, Paolino, 89
P'ero of Siena. 85
Pignotti, Lorenzo. 271, 294
1'ilato, Leonzio, 66, 94, 95
Pindemonte, Giovanni, 305
Pindemonte, Ippolito, 267, 293,

310

Pinelli, Giovanni, 220. 221
Pino, Bernardino, 183
Pistoria, II, 174. See Cammelli
Pitre, Giuseppe, 361
Pltti, Jacopo, 191
Pius II. 101

Pizzicolli (de'), Cirlaco, 104
Plautus, 178, 182
Pleiades, the, 173. 229
Plutarch, 279, 331
Poems of occasion, 292
Poerio. Alessandro. 331
Poetry, histories of, 265

INDEX

369

Polano. IMetro. 246

Poliziano (Ambrogini), 108, 113,

117, 120, 127

Political Economy, 297, 208. 342
Political literature. 125O et aeq.,

• •! tea., 3ti. 345
Political Poetry, 305, 331
Polo, Marco, 33
1'i'iitano, Giovanni, 106
Pope, Alexander, 267, 268, 271,

.".in, 311

Porro-Lnmbertenghl, I.ui^i. 316
ivrta. carlo. :;:;i. :::',5, 339
Porzlo, Camlllo, 203
Praga, Emillo, 349
Praga, Marco, 357
PraB, Giovanni, 332, 347
Precleuses. the. and Prezlosltft,

129. 281, i'.".!'. -••<•>
I'n-ti. <;inil:un<>, 232
Provence, literature of, 8 et seq.
Purr). Antonio. 83, 84. 85, 86
Purriantl. Giuseppe, 354
Pulcl, Bernardo, 127
Tulci, Luca, 124
Pulrl. Lulgl. 117. 122
Puotl, Baslllo, 346

Quadrlo, Francesco Saverlo, 265

Rajna, Plo. 1. 11. 123, 125, 360
Ramlxiklonl, Vittorlno, 100
Ramhaud d*- Vaquelras, 9
Rambouilh-r. Hotel. 231, 232
Ramuslo, Giambattista. 193
Ranalll, Ferdinando. 343
Ranleri, Antonio, 330
Rapisardl, Mario. :?."2
Rappresentazionl sacre, 126, 127
Redi. Francesco. 234
Regaldl, Giuseppe. 340
Religious literature, 207-8, 216,

251

Renier, Rodolfo, 359
Revere, Giuseppe, 3!9
Rlcchl, Agostino. 181
Rlccl, Angrlo Maria, 335
Ricclardl. Giambattista. 241
Rlcotti, Ercole. 344
Rienzo, Cola di, 02, «5
Rlnucclnl, Cino, 79
Rlnucclnl. Ottavio, 230, 244
Rlpamonte, 322
IJifmo cassincse. 7
Robertl. Giambattista, 205
Robortollo, Francesco, 206
Rolll, Paolo, 258
Komagnosl, G., 316, 342
Romance languages, the, 1 et seq.
Romanl, Felice. 356
Romanina, la, 259
Romanticism, 315-16

Ronsard. Pierre. 173, 220
Rosa, Gabriele. 344
Unsii. Salvator. 232. 241
Itoslnl. Giovanni. 336
Rosmlnl, Antonio, 342
Rossettl. Gabrlele. 331
Rossi, Glan Vlttorlo. 249
Rota. Bernardino. 103
Rovetta, Girolamo, 355, 357

Rozzl. the, 187
Rucellal. (Jlovannl, 175. 209
(I'usrtoll. Francesco, 1M1
Rustlciano da Pisa. 14, 33
Hiistlco di FlllpDO, 25
Uu/.zante, II, 185-6

SacchettI, Franco, 81, 83, 84, 87

Sadoleto, .Tacopo. l.'.l

Sallnilifnt'. of I'nrma. 33

RalutatI, Coluccio, 95

Salvlatl, Leonardo, 224

Rannazzaro. Jacopn. 119, 120, 152

Sanudo, Marino. 172

Seinlou. Victorii-n, 357

Rarpl. Paolo, 245

Sassettl. Fllippo, 204

Satires, 166. 170. 241

Ravioli, Lodovlco, 274

Savtozzo, II, 80

Ravonarola, 216

Rcala. Bartolommeo. 120

Scalvlnl. Giovlta, 233

Scandlano, Count. See Bolardo

Rcannabue, Aristarco, 292

SchettinI, Plero. 233

Scientific literature. 228, 252, 262

Scott. Sir Walter, 321

Scroffa, Camlllo, 240

Scudery, Mile, de, 231

Secco-Suardo Grismondi, 295

Regnerl. Paolo, 251

Segni. Bernardo, 191, 193

Serao, Matllde, "'<:,

Rercambl. Giovanni, 80, 81

Serdini, Slmone, 80

Serdonatl, Francesco. 205

Rergardl, Ludovlco. 241, 242

Sermlni, Gentile, 122

Sermone, the, 166

Sestlni, Bartolommeo, 333, 334

Settano, Qulnto, 242

Rettembrinl. Luigi. 325, 347

SgriccI, Tommaso, 334

Shakespeare. 188. 197, 202. 301,

303, 311, 333. 334. 339
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 330
Sicilian school, the, 10. 11, 19
Sidney, Sir Philip. 174
Sigoldi, Simone, 91
Slgonlo. Carlo, 189, 206, 220
Riri. Vittorio. 248
Slsmondl, 323
Slrventese, the, 85
Soderlnl, the Gonfalonlere, 133
Rografl. Antonio, -J^
Soldanl, Jacopo. 241. 242
Roldanieri. Niccolrt. 84
Rordello. 10, 53, 56
Rpagnoll, Giambattista. 152
Speroni. Sperone, 177, 207, 210,

2«>() .)•>.>

Rpallanzanl. Lazzaro. 295
Rpedalieri, Niccola, 20S
Rpolverinl. Giambattista, 295
Stnhili. Francesco, 77
Rtampa. Gaspara, 165
PteochctM. I.oronzo. 352
Rti'rne. Laurence. 310
Rtlffilanl, Tommaso. 231 233
Stoplno, Maestro, 232, 240

24

370

INDEX

Stoppa del Bostichl. 86
Stoppani, Antonio, 354
Stories, oldest collection of, 32
Strambotti, 20
Strambotti, 20
Strozzi, Palla, 98
Ptrozzi, Tito Vespasiano, 106
Stuart, Charles Edward, 280

Tabarrinl, Marco, 353
Taccone, Baldassare. 128
Tansillo, Luigi, 163, 168, 170,

208-10, 213

Tarsia (di) Galeazzo, 164
Tasso, Bernardo, 160, 164, 172
Tasso. Tormiato. 214, 218 et seq.,

223, 236, 255
Tassoni, Alessandro, 232, 237, 238.

241, 251

Tcbaldeo, Antonio, 129
Tedaldi, Pieraccio. 83, 84
Telesio, Antonio, 154
Telesio, Bernardino, 252
Tenca, Carlo, 347
Terence, 178, 182
Terza rima, 47
Testi, Fulvio, 232
Teza, Emilio. 352
Tifaboschi, Girolamo. 296
Tolomei, Claudio, 156, 164
Tolstoi, Leo, 355
Tommaso, Niccolo, 343
Tommassuccio da Foligno, 86
To-o!'i. I'Vn-ari Achille, 356
Torel'i, Pomponio, 211
Torricelli, Evangelista, 255
Torti, Giovanni, 333
Tragedies, 174-8, 210, 242, 261,

320
Translations, 31, 32, 94. 105, 267,

283. 310-11, 330-3, 352
Trapassi, Pietro. See Metastasio
Travels, 193, 250
Traversari, Ambrogio, 98.
Trissiro. Gian Giorgia, 155, 156,

159, 164, 174, 183, 227
Troiano, Massimo, 212
Troubadours, 8. 9, et seq., 26
Troya. Carlo. 341
Tnndalo, Vision of. 46
Tuscan dialect, the, 1, 156. See

Italian Language

Uberti (degli) Farinata, 56

Uberti (degli) Fazio, 77, 78. 79,

87

TTgolino. Count. 56
Umidi, the, 170
Universities, Italian, 152

Va'.pntino, Duke. See Borgia

Valla, Lorenzo, 102, 107

Vanini, Giulio Cesare, 252

Vannetti, Clementino, 312

Vannozzo (di), Francesco, 87

Vannucci, Atto, 344

Varano, Alfonso. 300

Varchi, Benedetto, 183, 191,

Varona, Costanza, 101

Vasari, Giorgio, 193

Vaucluse, 61

Vauquelin, Jean, 168

Vecchi, Vittorio, 354

Velluti, Dona to, 91

Venier, Domenico. ] 72

Verdizzotti, Giovanni Maria, 220

Verga, Giovanni. ::.".">

Verini, Giov. Battista, 162

Verri. Alessandro and Pietro, 299

Vettori, Piero, 206

Viassolo, Giambattista. 1:88

Vico, Giambattista. 263

Vida, Girolamo. 153

Vidal, Pierre. 9

Vieusseux, GJan Pietro, 313,

Villani, Giovanni, 90

Villani, Niccola, 255

Villari, Pasquale, 360

Vinci, Leonardo da. 143. 252

Vinciguerra, Antonio. 166

Virgil, 51 et seq., 268

Vittorelli, Jacopo, 274

VIviani, Vincenno. :.'">

Voltaire, 237, 267, 268, 292

Young, Edward, 271, 272

Zaccnria, Father, 265

Xanella, Giacomo, 347, 348

Zanoia, Giuseppe, 293

Zanotti. Francesco and Pietro,

295. 296

Zappi, Giambattista, 257
7eno, Apostolo, 265
Zenone da Pistoia, 78
Zola. Emile, 354
Zorzi, Bartolommeo, 10
Zumbini, Bonaventura, 359

386

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